Vimoh's Blog

This blog of mine underwent a redesign recently. That doesn’t mean a lot by itself, seeing as how I change themes as often as I bathe (Damn it! I did NOT say that). But this last design change was something a lot of thought went into. I like to think that it marks the beginning of a new path for vmohanty.com.

I wanted to do a post on what has changed and my reasons behind making those changes. Also, Patrix asked for it (see his post on the same topic).

Till now my blog has been like an article repository. One that got updated with essays and stories whenever I wrote something worth sharing. To this end, the blog has had a look more suited to a content-powered website. I have traditionally gone for a solid, full, and well-organised look. To cut a long story short, vmohanty.com has been more a site than a blog.

Add to that situation the fact that social media has grown in prominence in recent months. My own presence on Twitter and Facebook has a decent following (I’m just saying!) and I post tons of content there in the form of short text updates, photos, and comments. In the olden days, people did all this on their blogs.

But times have changed and the amount of interaction people used to have on blogs has dropped very noticeably. I share my photos in controlled environments inside social networks and they are viewed by people who care. My blog posts get more comments when they show up as notes on my Facebook profile. I have more followers on Twitter than I have feed subscribers on my blog. I actually get more feedback on my blog posts via twitter than I do in the comments section! Who would have thought of all this a few years ago?

I figured therefore, that I should “plug” my blog into my social media profile, because it sure as hell is not going to be able to stand on its own in the middle of all the other places that define my “presence” on the web nowadays. The blog must become a part of my small extended empire (as opposed to the centre of it).

Much of the new plan didn’t need any work at all. My blog URL is on my Twitter profile, and my posts get pushed to Facebook and Friendfeed via RSS. But what I needed was a way for the blog to share in the feel of the social web.

To this end, I tried to make my blog look more real-time. I let go of the need to categorise my posts into one of my ten clean categories and went for the more fluid convention of tags. My sidebar consists of nothing but a tag list now. This serves many purposes. Firstly, the list is a clear indication of what the blog is ‘about’. Secondly, the list is never static and keeps changing as I make new posts, with old tags coming up as and when I revisit those topics. What’s more? The tags also make for a great gateway into the deeper recesses of my blog.

Next, I implemented the Backtype Connect plugin on my Wordpress installation. It finds mentions of my blog posts on Twitter (and elsewhere) and plugs them into the specific post’s comments area. I found a plugin to do the same with facebook too, but it doesn’t seem to work too well. I have also installed a new Twitter-based microforum app called Tweetboard that shows threaded Twitter conversations right on this page. You can acces it by clicking on “tweets” on the left.

The theme I am using is called Prologue and it is a Wordpress theme to mimic Twitter. I made some minor adjustments to it (added a horizontal top navbar, changed some labels, implemented the post title function, etc). I chose it because it is simple, minimal, and easy to read. In addition, it lets me have a Twitter style display picture near the beginning of my posts.

This is more important than it might seem because a lot of my readership (most of it in fact) comes from Twitter and the display picture makes for a useful comfort element when that happens. I know this because I find display pictures very comforting on Twitter myself. They are like faces of people I know.

I have also changed the default URL structure on my blog so that it is very short and simple now. Only the base URL followed by a 3-digit post ID. This makes the links easy to remember and easy to post on Twitter etc. Yes, I know about URL shorteners, but you and I both know that we all hate them. I want postings on Twitter to look like they came from my blog, not a spam nest. Update: Changed the URLs to a fuller form. Pho Freak made a good point in the comments.

In the long run, I intend to keep posting all manner of stuff here. Articles and stories will continue to show up as before, but unlike the past there will also be a lot of opinion (politics, culture, life in general) just like on my Twitter stream.

I have rambled enough. Feel free to let me know what you think of the redesign and of the blog. If I have missed something, ask away.

An article I wrote on Twitter was published in this month’s issue of AND magazine. Here’s the original unedited version of it.

About a week ago, I was sitting in the company of a few random journalists. They were talking about Twitter, a hot little web service that allows members to post 140 character updates to the internet and receive similar updates from other members. These updates, technically speaking, are status updates (the sort you post on Google Talk or on your Facebook profile), but they can vary in nature. People use Twitter to break news, do political commentary, share interesting links, and even write micro-fiction (stories 140 characters or less in length).

However, as is common practice among people from mainstream media, nobody in the gathering saw Twitter as much more than an uppity little pastime. Why anyone would feel the need to broadcast the most frivolous bits of their daily lives to the whole world was beyond what they could imagine.

I joined Twitter over two years ago. I was there before Barack Obama got on it and made it a crucial tool in his campaign to be the President of the United States of America (and won!). I was there before some of the world’s largest corporations started using Twitter as a direct line to their consumer base. I was there before news of some of the most devastating natural disasters in recent times spread across the world through Twitter.

I have seen it all unfold, in a manner of speaking, before my very eyes. As you might imagine, every time Twitter is called ‘frivolous’ (or some such thing) in my presence, my heart rages in righteous indignation. Why must something as time-tested as Twitter suffer judgment by those who only came to know about it five minutes ago?

Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter has been quietly and steadily adding new features to its web interface, making it a richer place to log in to, without compromising on the simplicity that has become Twitter’s trademark.

Today morning, I woke up to find my replies tab replaced with a new “mentions” function. While seemingly inconsequential, this makes things a whole lot easier for users. I constantly have Twitter Search tab open in Firefox to track retweets or to see if someone tagged me in a tweet. Now I don’t have to.

The current web interface has integrated search, trending topics, username tracking and all major Twitter features enabled. Here are some other things I would love to see them add to it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook is high on functionality but rather low on accessibility. The recent redesign opens up a lot of possibilities for the service to make sure some of its best features come to the fore, thereby enhancing the whole Facebook experience.

I will try to list a few things they might want to do to make this happen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some time ago, I was faced with the task of explaining Twitter to someone who hadn’t, till then, heard of it. I told her to imagine Facebook minus all features except the status bar. She instantly got it. What do you think this means?

If I had to define Twitter in one word, I would simply say that it is an interface. Think about it.

Apart from the interface, there really is nothing that keeps Facebook and Twitter from turning into each other. Of course, an interface is never just an interface.

It is the interface which ends up deciding what kind of conversations a platform will encourage. It is the interface which allows or disallows users to do things that they want to do.

Facebook has been called a walled garden for long. And not without reason either. Apart from being a platform closed to the external web, it also had solid walls within the garden. I for one, found the place very nearly impossible to navigate in the beginning.

Twitter on the other hand, was a simple and solid idea. It did one thing, and did it well. There was little to learn and the experience was so smooth that people were at a loss for words when asked to explain it.

Twitter users, by and large, eagerly await news features (as do users of Friendfeed). Facebook however, with every redesign, ends up displeasing a great many of its users. Why do you think that is?

I think Facebook is growing faster than its users are. The Twitter crowd is the Twitter crowd, a breed that came into being because of Twitter and continues to thrive because of the sphere called microblogging that Twitter has spawned.

The Facebook junta, on the other hand, is the social networking crowd. They came from various Internet places and took to Facebook mostly because their friends were already on it. In other words, they lack the early-adopter style enthusiasm for change that marks the average Twitter user.

My personal sphere on Facebook comprises mostly of people who log in anywhere between once a day to once a week to check if anyone has uploaded photos. That’s about it.

The new Twitter-like design of Facebook scores because it alters the basic way Facebook communicates with its users. It encourages (some might say forces) users to stay logged in for longer periods of time and participate more actively in the many live and ongoing discussions that are sprouting all over their Facebook sphere.

I have seen my Facebook come to life in these past few days. I have seen scores of comments on simple status updates and shared links. This never happened earlier. The new-look Facebook has finally put Facebook in a position where it can allow its gazillion odd features to be of use. The thousands of photos, quizzes, book and movie review apps can now enable and enhance conversation instead of being pretty little ornaments.

Of course, the current look is not as streamlined as I would like it to be, but I do believe it is a huge step in the right direction.

Post Obamania in the US of A, Indian politicians and netizens woke up to the immense possibilities that the web offered. News channels launched special election mini sites and the social web came alive with dedicated fan pages for politicians and Twitter hashtags to keep track of discussions on the run-up to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in India.

BuzzGain tracked over 1,200,404 Indian blogs, over 12,000 print media sources and over 34,000 Indian microbloggers to come up with detailed metrics, analysis and sentiment of their current trends regarding the elections.

Read the rest of this entry »