Back in the early days of blogs–at least on WordPress, anyway–one could have a widget on the sidebar that provided links to that blogger’s favorite blogs. A look at what that blogger finds interesting in the hopes that you’ll find it interesting too. That’s what passed for Social Networks back in the Web 1.0 days. I’m using Web 1.0 to identify the time before Friendster, Facebook, and the like.
I’m noticing a shift from the Social Networks and back towards Blogs. It appears to me that there’s a segment of the online population that has realized that social networks have changed dramatically over the years. The algorithm rewards engagement good or bad, bad actors use that against us while we are served ads relevant to what we’re engaging with. I don’t know why this is hard to understand. So, I understand why I’m wanting to head back to blogs. I’m just really at the end of my tether with social media. I just don’t think it serves any purpose any more than to make people mad. It certainly doesn’t bring the eyeballs to my content. Such as it is. I know. I’m trying.
I’m not going to delete my social media, but I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be using it. My place is here, and I don’t care about the algorithm. You’ll notice that comments are turned off here. I don’t want them. WordPress is free at the dot com site, and you can get web hosting relatively cheaply. You can respond over at your place that you control. I’ll serve up what I want here.
About that blogroll: I’m going to get rid of the Links Page over on the sidebar and figure out how to install a blogroll here. Stay Tuned on that.