We need more personal blogs

Putting your photos and writing on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network site means giving up control of the contents that you produce. When a social network is no longer relevant, your contents are locked in, and difficult to get out and moved to the next, new, cool social network.

It used to be normal to have a personal blog that was under the control of the individual blogger. Now it is normal to give up control in favor of the convenience and possibility for exposure that you can get from the big social media silos.

It does not have to be that way.

There is a possibility of getting the best of both worlds. You can publish on you own site, keep control of your contents, and automatically syndicate (re-publish) it to social networks. The IndieWeb folks call this "POSSE", Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

Wordpress has a built-in feature for publishing new blog-posts to social networks, and other software is available to do the same. One such interesting software, focusing on short-form content, is the new Micro.Blog project by Manton Reece, which is currently running a Kickstarter campaign in support of his software and his book about a social network build on open standards. Check out the campaign, and support the open web in any way you can.