writing

Nicolas Magand on reading their blog:

Writing makes me refine my thoughts, but I think publishing makes my brain click the “Move to bin” command for these now-safely-backed-up thoughts.

This is what I like about writing. Once I've done my research, gathered my notes, crafted my story and published it, I can go back and see what I thought and understood at that point in time. A snapshot, that what my blog posts are.

Dan Moore on using support tickets to improve and create documentation.

Reading support tickets not only helps you build content, it also makes you aware of where users are confused. This is super helpful for devrels looking to make high-impact example apps, videos and other documentation. If 10 folks don’t understand how to use feature X and cared enough to write in, you should probably document feature X in some way. Following around product experts like your support team and converting what they have written to generic posts is a great way to teach you important details about commonly used features and issues of your product that you might otherwise have never known.

The full post isn't long and worth the read. I wanted to specifically highlight the importance gathering customer insights and sentiment from field teams and using them to create blog posts, clarify documentation, and build demos. Not only will this improve the quality of your product content but also quality of life at work by giving field teams an opportunity at greater impact.

Michael Miszczak writes about the effects of Google search over the years on smaller bloggers and publishers. First through snippets of information directly on the search page and now through AI summaries and down ranking smaller sites.

Google is often called a tech company, but that’s a misnomer. It might have been true a decade ago, but that label no longer applies to the Alphabet of today. What Google has actually become is the largest advertising company in the world. They feed you ads and make money that none of us can dream of making.

Discovered via Ana Rodrigues.

Earlier this month I linked to a post on Kottke where they talked about using hypertexts in blogs. Arun extends this in his blog with tasteful visuals that would not otherwise be possible in traditional media.

Blogs are native to the web, which affords a very different form of consumption than traditional print media. I love weaving in video, illustration, and animation into my otherwise static posts. For example, my post on the Apple Card extensively uses video clips that illustrate ideas much better than static images could.

This is a post on Kottke, discovered through People & Blogs, about writing on the web and the ability to load a paragraph with links enabling information density. The example given quotes a paragraph from NY Times which contains only 110 words but has 27 links to other NY Times opinion pieces adding "receipts" to their point of view. This is a style of writing that is only possible on the web, something I hadn't fully realised before.