In between the first and the second time I re-pledged my commitment to the medium of blogging, I posted just three times. This year, it’s four times, which represents a strong upward trend. Let’s say it represents a strong upward trend.

Last year, I wrote about the permanence of ideas, and the trend towards short-form fire-and-forget tweets serving as the only written expression of important thoughts and ideas. How 140 characters can so vastly over-distill an expression that perhaps all that is left is a bitter syrupy remnant of an otherwise complex and nuanced thought. Worse still, the distillation never occurs, the idea overflows and escapes leaving nothing but a curious smell and a slight unease around naked flames.

This year, my thoughts are turned to something much more fundamental. Chris writes about the shutdown of Google Reader and with it, the importance of not only capturing and expressing your thoughts and ideas, but continuing to own the means by which they are published. Ever since the halcyon days of Web 2.0, we’ve been netting our butterflies and pinning them to someone else’s board. The more time that passes, the more we contribute and the more we become invested in platforms that are becoming less and less relevant to current market conditions and trends.

Will it end well? It will not.

If content is important to you, keep it close. If your content is important to others, keep it close and well backed up. Hope that what you’ve created never has to die. Make sure that if something has to die, it’s you that makes that decision. Own your own data, friends, and keep it safe.

Well, this has been weird.