Alright – so this stirred the pot on Twitter, so I thought I’d expand on this here.
I tossed a comment onto Twitter today which read: “Pondering unsubscribing from 3 blogs who are using “retroblogging” techniques. Sorry, but I simply don’t have the time.“. A lot of people commented back to me about this, and wondered what it is and why I’m no longer going to be reading them… So I thought I’d expand.
First, I’ve been explained that “retroblogging” is creating blog posts that are past-dated, though publishing them on a later date. The people I’ve seen doing this have explained to me that this is done to put additional perspective on when the thought hit, and not when the post was written. This would mean that my handful of blog post ideas in my notebook from PodCamp toronto would all be dated … last weekend. Part of the “retroblogging” thin, though, is that posts are still published in order… So this post wouldn’t be “allowed” until ALL of my posts “from” last weekend went up. That way everything stays in order and retains the perspective of when things are thought of.
Here’s the problem, though. If I’m a reader of your blog, which I may have been until today, 3 posts in 10 minutes is CRAZY. I make a point of trying to keep on top of my blogs. I use my “mark as read” buttons very frequently, and try to go to bed with a clean slate. Why? Because it lets me start each day fresh and new and able to keep up. I do, occasionally, let some things drift, but that should be my call. If it’s March 2nd and you’re posting something dated February 27th, along with 3, 5 or 8 other posts, IT’S OLD NEWS. And having to devote 10, 20 or 45 minutes to catch up on your blog, because you, for whatever reason, didn’t post it when it should have been posted, is TOO MUCH TIME – and I’m not going to put up with it any more.
If I’m no longer a subscriber to your blog, I’m sorry. I’m hoping important things you have to say reach me via others. If you think I was (And am no longer as a result of this) a reader, feel free to get in touch. Especially if you change your practices.
Tommy Vallier helps groups, individuals and businesses understand how social media tools can be used to their fullest. He is also a community builder and web developer living in Kingston, Ontario.
To me, the problem with postdating a post is that it doesn’t reflect the time and events between the original thought and the actual writing. One may have had the original seed of an idea three days ago, but in the time between the idea will certainly have mutated, expanded, and changed. And other new events and influences will have been part of that. The thing I’d distrust about something that was postdated is that one might seem to have been prescient, including information that happened before the thing was written but that seems to have happened after it.
I’m not saying these bloggers are necessarily doing this to seem smarter than they are; but few of us remember or realize all the things that influence our thoughts, and I think they’re being disingenuous by writing as if their thoughts were fully formed and set the moment they had a first inkling of what they wanted to blog.
I guess I don’t understand the anger about it… Mind you , I have enough trouble blogging in the present, so I’ve no danger of being included here, but I wonder why it has to be so timely?
Sure, a news/current events blog loses it’s usefulness as the currency goes away, but do you apply this to “opinion based” blogs too? Does it matter if someone has 4 opinions they blog about per week, and they back date them? But it’s ok if they had the 4 thoughts on the same day? Isn’t that the whole idea behind being able to mark something as read? – to be able to come back to those we haven’t read later on?
Seems like it’s a slippery slope, I mean, I can post my thoughts about podcamp boston 2007 now, and they’re still relevant thoughts no matter what post date I put.. aren’t they?
I guess that also means you shouldn’t prewrite blog posts from a plane or train?
I’m concerned that you seem to be making the timestamp more important than the content – and that would be unfortunate..