PICK ME and other required reading for internet creatives
I’ve read a bunch of stuff on the internet this past week that I feel compelled to share and discuss.
Frustratingly, I lack the time to actually write thoughtful responses, but my hope is that by sharing them, y’all can benefit, and maybe we can talk about it together.
Flickr, Pinterest, and Instagram: my strong feels, as both a user and a publisher
I have some strong feels about photo hosting online, my friends. Over the last decade, I’ve watched the landscape of photo hosting websites shift, from a time when there was nothing decent, to a time when there was something amazingly awesome (Flickr!), to a time when there were tons of options, to time when there are a few front-runners (Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram) none of which work as well as the tools we used back when I got married in 2004.
This post is long. This post is probably overly emotional considering we’re talking about web apps and photo hosting. But man… photos are my memories, and as a publisher, photos are part of my business model. So let’s get out our hankies and our rallying fists in the air and talk this shit over.
You will hate this article: thoughts on internet commenting
Interesting thoughts from Yahoo’s Virginia Heffernan: “Mostly I don’t mind it, getting jumped by commenters day after day. Often I think it’s good for me, like growing up in a tough neighborhood…”
The death of Google Reader and the future of RSS
A few weeks ago, Google announced that they were shutting down Google Reader, the tool used by thousands of Offbeat Empire readers to follow our RSS feeds. I had some super strong feels when the announcement was made, because I’ve been personally using Google Reader pretty much daily since it launched 8 years ago. For those of us who digest a LOT of information online, RSS is an awesome method, and Google Reader was the best tool. While it was sad for me personally, it was mostly a theoretical sadness because honestly? I’d already switched to a new RSS reader a few months ago…