For the past few weeks, I have been posting much more frequently, in a revived “Notes” section on this site. I have not been quite sure what to call this format, which I borrowed most directly from Simon Willison, and secondarily from Tom MacWright. It is not quite microblogging as I tend to think of it, though Tom files it under “micro”. It is also not quite what I think of as “regular” blogging (macro-blogging?). It is more at the level of the ind of thing I jot down in my notebook, or might send over to a friend in a quickly-typed up note, which is why I filed it under the “Notes” section of my website.

Noteblogging

If I learn something, or I think of something I know but realize might not be obvious to some of my readers, I write up a short post. It takes me between 5 and 15 minutes — longer than that, and I move it to a different bucket. I publish it ASAP, after doing a minimal grammar and spelling check. The point is simply to get the thing into the world with as little friction as possible — but not (or at least not only) on social media.

Writing an email referencing it just a few minutes ago, I half-jokingly called it “noteblogging”, and then I realized that “noteblogging” is actually a pretty good name for this. All of these are basically “public notebooks”, not in the sense of Andy Matuschak’s carefully-curated notes system but in the sense of notes we might write for ourselves or for a colleague, and which we are instead sharing publicly. Not a public Zettelkasten, exactly, but something adjacent to it.

As I said when I started doing this, these kinds of “notes” get about a tenth as much time and attention as one of my Journal entries,¹ which in turn get about a tenth as much time and attention as one of my Essays. “Noteblogging” feels like it captures the feel pretty well. Henceforth, then: noteblogging it is!

Which is also a good time to say: if you are not doing this kind of noteblogging, I encourage you to try it. It is a great way to share the kinds of things you might post about on social media, and a noteblog post can be the foundation of a good social media post or thread in its own right, while making sure you own your turf.