Screenshot of my new blog i am dad, using a simple microblogging template.
I recently did some redecorating of this blog, stripping back the design to what I considered to be more essential basics and a cleaner, more user-friendly interface. A lot of colleagues left comments via various forms of social media to say they really liked the new look.
I went a couple of steps further when designing my new blog (a more personal one oriented around life as a dad) and selected a format that is often called a 'micro-blog' -- or something along those lines.
What you get with this sort of format is basically the content, with a minimal amount of extras in the way of sidebar items, graphics, or menus. Things like weblinks, blogroll, etc. are omitted. There is still the capacity to search the blog for relevant posts based on keywords or tags, but basically you're just getting posts and the comments they generate.
A new ELT blog I've become a big fan of, Magpie Moments, uses the same essential format and I think it really works.
It's interesting, because I think in a lot of ways these blogs are closer to the 'real deal' when it comes to blogging. They're not about trying to milk a network through mutual back scratching in the form of blogrolls or 'favourites' or any of that. They're not about using blogging as a subtle front or sidebar to the blogger's main business interests.
I'm not saying people blog or format blogs purely for these reasons. Then again, I'm not saying they're don't, either...
What do you think of the microblog format?
=D
