Lying here in bed gives me a lot of time to just let my mind wander. I keep coming back to a thought I had earlier today while cutting the grass. For some reason, I started thinking about my old moblog I had on TextAmerica.
Back when I decided to start a moblog, I started it on a service called Buzznet. As a matter of fact, not only are they still around, but so is my original moblog. It wasn’t until I started reading Kevin Rose’s blog that I got interested in TextAmerica. You see, back then he had just started using TextAmerica for his moblog, and always wanting to be on the bleeding edge, I got myself an account and started posting all my pictures there. Everything was fine and dandy. I really liked the service and it was pretty reliable. Then, in July 2006, they announced they were doing away with the free accounts all of us had grown to love and were going to start charging a fee to keep your account. Don’t quote me on this but I do believe that the fee was $99 a year. Then, to really piss people off, if you didn’t pay by a certain date, they deleted you free account. What a dick move, eh? Since that time, I have used flickr as my host for my moblog.
My original moblog on Buzznet still exists!
On a side note, TextAmerica didn’t last too long after that. They ended up shutting down in December 2007.
The old TextAmerica website
What I really miss about those days of using Buzznet and TextAmerica was the fun and newness of having a moblog. I used take pictures of anything and everything and throw it up there regardless if I thought someone might be interested or not. I tend to find myself catering to flickr users by constantly asking myself, “will they find this interesting?” before uploading a photo. I really need to reset my brain and go back to the mentality I had back when I first started my moblog. I should be posting photos because I like them, not because I’m hoping someone else will.
It’s almost the same thing I went through with Twitter a few months ago. I had to stop concerning myself with how often I tweeted and how many followers I had. Was I on Twitter for me or them? This is the way I need to approach my moblog from here on out. Back to basics.
