Matthew Lang

Last week I linked to Manton Reece’s dedication to staying the course for Micro.blog and the potential of blog-focused technologies when it comes to going up against the likes of Facebook.

There’s simply too many places to publish to these days and unless you have it automated or other people doing it for you (chance would be a fine thing), it can become overwhelming trying to post everywhere.

Here’s a few places where I don’t publish and why.

LinkedIn

I’ve have a chequered past with LinkedIn in much the same way as I have had with Twitter. It’s one of those things that is necessary to have but not always an enjoyable experience.

LinkedIn is a social network for the work-place but in truth it’s more akin to a hunting ground for recruitment agencies keen to place anyone they deem to be suitable for one of their roles. Okay, that might be slightly biased by my experience of LinkedIn but it’s the experience that I have had and I’m sure many others have to.

I’m sure it’s a great place for building your career’s network but I’ve yet to see the value in LinkedIn as instead of an introduction in person, through a phone call or even by email.

Anyway, the reason that I don’t post to LinkedIn or promote my content there is because I don’t have the time to read what other people are posting there. So if I don’t have the time to read what others are posting then why would others read what I am posting?

My usual routine with LinkedIn is that I log in, check my messages, check the notifications and then log back out again. I don’t read my timeline, look for others to connect with or anything else that LinkedIn has to offer.

It’s just not the place where I want to publish to. I could but I’m of the opinion that there’s many more people who use LinkedIn in the same way as I do and therefore it’s not the ideal place to share content.

Google+

This one’s easy. I don’t have a Google account.

There’s another reason though. I can’t remember the last time that I clicked a link that took me to a Google+ account or post. In fact I couldn’t even tell you what Google+ looks like as an interface. Is it even still a Google product?

When a social network like this doesn’t even trigger a visual representation of what it looks like then it’s clear that it’s no longer worth publishing to.

Facebook

Want to hear a secret?

I had a Facebook account for a few months there. Shocking I know. Mr “I don’t have a Facebook account” finally succumbed. Well, for a few months anyway.

I used it so that Ethan could get news and updates from his club’s junior section through their Facebook group. Now though my account has been de-activated and Ethan has his own account and manages this for himself while adhering to a few house rules on using Facebook.

The reason that I don’t share on Facebook is that I see Facebook as a time sink that I don’t want to cater to. Yes I’ve had an for few months but it came with a few restrictions. I didn’t hand over my phone number, I used a different email address for it and I didn’t install it on my phone, I put it on an iPad where it doesn’t ask for your phone number.

Once the usual email address and phone number goes in then the floodgates open. Notifications for friend suggestions, friend requests and who knows what else. I can do without that kind of hassle.

Medium

I’ve added Medium to the list of places that I don’t share content to as it has become something similar to Facebook. While Facebook is the place for sharing updates with family and friends, Medium has become the place to share your writing.

I’ve toyed with publishing content to Medium a few times, but while I have my own web site that I write for, I don’t see the point in having a separate channel on another network for something that I already do on my own.

What it boils down to though for me is time and energy. Where can I share content without spending too much time and energy sharing that content?

I share my thoughts and other junk here on the blog because I can control it and I also own the domain.

It’s also easy to manage the performance of what I post. I use Gauges to track traffic to the blog and it gives two metrics that are all I need. Page views and visitors.

Micro.blog and Twitter are two other places where I like to share content as it’s easy to share the content to them and I can automate the posting between the two.

Jason Kottke shares his.

I love this idea as a recurring post.

I'm still grappling with Micro.blog but what's reassuring is Manton dedication to staying the course for the platform with an eye to the long term.

I plan to stay the course. I’m inspired by the work of the IndieWeb, which was founded 6 years ago and is still gaining momentum today. I hope that the solar eclipse photos posted to indie microblogs today will last through the next North American eclipse 7 years from now, and longer.

— Flip the Iceberg by Manton Reece

Manton also includes a link to an article on AltPlatform that suggests blog-focused platforms could eventually become bigger than any of the existing social networks.

Open source tools like WordPress, 1999.io and Mastodon.social are creating many small networks of publishers, and popular tools like Twitter and Micro.blog could peer with them. If all of the social networks outside of Facebook interoperated at some level, they might eventually “flip the iceberg” and become the dominant form of social networking.

— How Twitter, Micro.blog & Mastodon could team up to compete with Facebook by AltPlatform

With so many different outlets and tools out there it can become difficult to decide on where to focus your energy.

I'll cover my reasons for not publishing on the different social networks later on in the week.

A while back, I read with disgruntlement about the change that Smile were introducing to their TextExpander product. It was the introduction of a cloud syncing change to their product which required a monthly subscription.

I wasn't too keen on the idea. The reason I wasn't too chuffed with the idea is that I only ever used TextExpander on my MacBook Pro and nowhere else. I decided to look for an alternative. I switched to aText and never looked back. Until now.

Last week I purchased an iPad Pro. I've spent the first couple of days getting the various apps I needed setup. Then I started working on getting together a usable development environment so that I could do everything on my iPad Pro that I can do on my MacBook Pro. Aside from some of the terminal hackery that I can do on my MacBook, I can do just about everything else on my iPad including web development work for clients.

With my new tablet of choice I started doing administration work last week. An invoice was outstanding so I started the process of gathering the work I did for the week and writing the invoice and email for the client. Invoice done, I moved to the email. After a couple of attempts at trying to generate my email template I then realised that I wasn't using my Macbook Pro which is why the auto-expanding snippet I use for this particular email didn't work. It was time to re-assess the auto-expanding snippet tool of choice.

So what's a familiar auto-expanding tool that let's me use a single library of snippets across multiple devices? Well, TextExpander of course!

Is the subscription price for this worth it now?

I think so.