Interactive blogging experimentation

by on January 22, 2009

I’m playing with a new technique of writing that I call “interactive blogging.” What is it? Well, instead of writing a post like I’m doing here and then publishing it after I’ve finished it, I post WHILE I’m writing my ideas on a topic. I’ll start a Twitter post like, but I will post it onto friendfeed. I’ve set friendfeed to publish to Twitter, but when it does it leaves a URL at the end of the tweet back to the friendfeed item. That lets me setup some interesting questions that I’ll write really quickly on. The advantage here is that I can see how people are reacting LIVE to my ideas. They often ask me questions and take me down paths I wasn’t expecting to go. Here’s some examples, wonder what you think:

I will discuss why I can never have another Diet Coke here.

Health privacy is dead. Here’s why.”

Too many choices at Best Buy. Photo and discussion.

Want a news tip? Amazon Kindle is sold out. Hint here.

@netvalar now wants to know about friendfeed’s rooms. Here’s why they are the coolest tool for Twitter users

“To new friendfeeders (there are thousands due to Twitter invites and follows), here’s what you need to know.”

On the other hand, sometimes you just need to do a really well thought out post and not have the distractions. Comments from other people are distractions and they can take you down paths that aren’t very productive and interrupt flow. You can see all that in the examples above. But they are fun to do because engagement from other people is fun and addictive.

  • I guess it's fun. but in that case you are writing a post but publishing a conversation.
    the well thought posts is still a separate way to do things. Sometimes I insert a conversation to illustrate a thought.
  • So you go to bed for 2 hours or was this a timed post? cause damn I'd be cranky with no sleep!
  • I think you hit the nail on the head as to why this style of blogging is so interesting;

    "because engagement from other people is fun and addictive"
  • richandcreamy: going to bed right now. Not enough sleep for tonight, is right. Mat: exactly.
  • Hi Robert,

    Mobile Industry Review have got a bit of an experiment in interactive blogging going on themselves at the moment.

    They've put up a Digg clone site for readers to vote on which PR pitches they should cover at the Mobile World Congress next month, see:

    http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/01/vot...

    and

    http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/mwc/
  • I do a similar thing by posting questions to sites like Kwippy and Twitter. It helps me flesh out my ideas and get's folks thinking about what I'm writing. I then write up a blog post and ask for feedback/comments. It's been working well for someone who has no clue what they are doing in the whole social-networking stuff.
  • I do a similar thing by posting questions to sites like Kwippy and Twitter. It helps me flesh out my ideas and get’s folks thinking about what I’m writing. I then write up a blog post and ask for feedback/comments. It’s been working well for someone who has no clue what they are doing in the whole social-networking stuff.

    *note wrong email in the first post
  • Joining the conversations late but this is a great idea.
  • B"H There's interactive blogging and then there is EASY to produce video blogs - check out my video blog at www.davidportnoy.blogspot.com.
  • stevenimmons
    Yes, good idea. You could have a scratch-pad version as described, a pro version (where as you say you fully elaborate the article), and perhaps somewhere in the middle a fully-interactive wiki-blog style for collaborative authoring. Attribution for the best contributions to that style might be kind of interesting? You'd want to avoid moderation bun-fights though as that can be a big 'energy sucker'! I shall term it "Wisdom of Crowds Blogging" :-)
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