jonathan.beckett@gmail.com

Contemplating a Second Blog

I’ve been sitting around a conference room table in a hotel all day with co-workers, taking turns to talk about the various technologies we find ourselves using, for the benefit of the management and sales guys. Also present was the girl that has taken over posting to the social internet accounts on behalf of the company – to fill her head with ideas.

As the day ended and we said our goodbyes, I introduced myself…

“I should probably come and say hello to you”

“Yes – you’re the one with all the followers at Twitter aren’t you.”

I grinned. Somehow I have ended up with more followers than everybody else in the company combined. There’s a simple reason why – (a) I’ve been at Twitter since it launched, and (b) I used to play the whole social media game – mostly for fun. Like many people I eventually grew tired of playing “who can piss the highest”, and let’s admit it – that’s all Twitter really is – hence the proliferation of marketing accounts.

The conversation got me thinking. What if I started writing a professional blog again? A blog filled with shared knowledge, code snippets, and how-to articles? I used to write one – which is half the reason for the army of dead accounts following me on Twitter. I used to write up notes, and share them with the world. I used to do a lot of things.

It’s tinkering again though, isn’t it. If I just have this one blog (the one you’re reading) I can happily write all this rubbish just to get it out of my head. Occasionally I write things people agree with, and that makes it all somehow worthwhile.

I don’t know though. There’s a huge temptation to feed the Twitter monster and ramp up the follower numbers once again – if for no other reason than to annoy everybody I work with that might look at the numbers.

Do I even have time to write a second blog?