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10 Jul 2008 mellow_bunny

Breaking that barrier.

I was perusing Ryan’s blog over at Aloe Dream today when I came upon his post “Micro-Blogging Revisted“. This post really got me thinking about our internet presence as a community as such.

Before I go on, Ryan is a really talented guy and he has this SUPER AWESOME project called Melative. I’m hoping to perhaps get an interview with him so I can fill you guys in on it. He has some awesome ideas and has created some sweet as things. Back to the story…

Although I may not have looked at the post in the way that Ryan intended he said something which sparked my mind.

Jyri makes a good point about “value” and while the steam of the otakusphere is “the current, the hot, the seasonal”, a couple months later it just doesn’t matter (editorials rule the time! glad to see more of these in recent months!!)

He made a really good point. The way I think about it is that small short posts of information just do not last and don’t hold as much weight in our community. Even posts that are off-topic as such or not about the latest thing can sometimes be lost in the wind. This got me thinking… Is our community of anime and manga enthusiasts able to support a microblogging system? Is it able to support a culture different to the view it has now? Are we forever going to be bloggers who want to create impacting indepth articles on shows we love?

We don’t value smaller posts or posts about off season shows as much as we do editorials or hot shows for instance in that they have no real lasting strength. Does this mean that our community will not be able to branch out into other avenues of blogging or sharing information?

That is what I want to know. Innovation I believe is probably the key to expanding, not changing our horizons. If we were to take all the random maybe fleeting thoughts we have on ways to enhance our online experience and share them with like minded individuals.. the likelihood for an age of creation is high (queue epic music).

It would be cool if perhaps a group of us (or even just one huge massive discussion) sat down and talked about what we see now in the online otakusphere, where it’s headed and what we could perhaps do (or are already doing re: Melative) to try and expand the horizons?

If you are totally lost about what I mean here then take a look at MAL and take a peek at Melative. These are web applications which are changing the way we as bloggers and as an anime enthusiast community interact. Why limit ourselves to just writing away using Wordpress. LETS GET INVENTIVE! Let’s create stuff which is awesome. Let’s make our part of the internet cool, let’s make it fresh and let’s do stuff that hasn’t been done anywhere else.

I’ve seen some really cool fairly unique ideas with some good backers out there. These include new ways to share information with one another, ways in which to challenge one another and ways in which to just have plain fun with anime.

What will it take for us to jump in and just have a chat about it all? Share ideas, ping pong the thoughts and perhaps come out better off for it?

Ryan noted in his post one thing which I know would make a huge difference to the way we all blog. Coming away with some way to simplify everyone’s blogging efforts would be a great result from a discussion.

If you want to see some cool new things arrive in this community then for noe’s sake comment. Let’s get excited about the community we thrive in. Let’s set a new standard for ourselves. Let’s just just crazy guys and girls (who don’t exist).

Holla at me if you are interested in being a part of some sort of open discussion to see what kind of ways in which we can make our community better. I’d love to help get this started and hopefully we can come away with a fresh look at our blogging community.