If you’re a regular reader of my site, you’ll have noticed that in the last few months I’ve been making a number of “fragments” posts. Such a post is a short post with a bunch of little, unconnected segments. These are usually a reference to something I’ve found on the web, sometimes a small thought of my own.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have covered these topics with posts on my own site. Instead I would use Twitter, either retweeting someone else’s point, or just highlighting something I’d found. But since the Muskover, Twitter has effectively died. I’m not saying that due to any technical issues with the site, which has mostly just been fine, nor directly due to any…
If you’re a regular reader of my site, you’ll have noticed that in the last few months I’ve been making a number of “fragments” posts. Such a post is a short post with a bunch of little, unconnected segments. These are usually a reference to something I’ve found on the web, sometimes a small thought of my own.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have covered these topics with posts on my own site. Instead I would use Twitter, either retweeting someone else’s point, or just highlighting something I’d found. But since the Muskover, Twitter has effectively died. I’m not saying that due to any technical issues with the site, which has mostly just been fine, nor directly due to any of the policy changes there. The point is that lots of people have left, so that the audience I would have reached with Twitter is now fragmented. Some remain on X, but I see more activity on LinkedIn. There’s also Fediverse/Mastodon and Bluesky.
What this means for short posts is that I can no longer just post in one place. When I announce new articles on martinfowler.com, I announce now on four social media sites (X, LinkedIn, Fediverse, and Bluesky). It makes sense to do this, but I don’t want to go through all this hassle for the kind of micro-post that Twitter served so well.
So I’ve started to batch them up. When I see something interesting, I make a note. When I have enough notes, I post a fragments post. Initially I did this in a rather ad-hoc way, just using the same mechanisms I use for most articles, but last week I started to put in some more deliberate mechanisms into the site. (If you’re observant, you’ll spot that in the URLs.)
One benefit of all of this, at least in my book, is that it means my material is now fully visible in RSS. I’m probably showing my age, but I’m a big fan of RSS (or in my case, strictly Atom) feeds. I miss the feel of the heyday of the “blogosphere” before it got steamrolled by social media, and these fragment posts are, of course, just the same as the link blogs from that era. I still use my RSS reader every day to keep up with writers I like. (I’m pleased that Substack makes its content available via RSS.) It bothered me a bit that my micro-founts of Twitter knowledge weren’t visible on RSS, but was too lazy to do something about it. Now I don’t need to - the fragments are available in my RSS feed.