Do you also feel guilty for writing posts that make people click through to your blog to read the whole thing, or is it just me?

@pratik I don’t, but I don’t do them title-less as often as you do. That’s in part because I dislike breaking up what I’m writing in that way in a timeline more than I dislike having a title and a link for those who want to read something based on the title.

@pratik If it’s not clickbait-y headers, (and I haven’t seen any there), then you should not feel guilty of anything. When people want to spend time on your blog, it’s not because you made them, but because they want to.

@jsonbecker I’m more of the former, like you. Perhaps that makes me sometimes wary about writing micro posts in Drafts and posting them via Actions. But then, is writing for the timeline an appropriate way? Especially if the title is clickbaity. I used to be pretty finicky about titles, categories, and other metadata but realized doing that often added friction to my writing. I wish the Mb handled the truncation of long-form posts better.

@pratik 😂 nobody needs my 1000 word posts on their timeline, I’m keeping it tidy with links

@pratik I guess my sense is that the goal should be to not care about the timeline at all. At least that’s my goal. I still view the best, correct, first experience of what I write to be going to my site on the browser first, RSS/JSON feed second, and last is any other form of social feed I syndicate to (and I consider the timeline one of those places)

@pratik I don’t. I try to title things compellingly but accurately when I title them and I only title long form posts. I also do a series of quote posts scheduled over several days (no more than 2 per day at widely separated times) to get people interested in reading my long form posts. Short form posts are untitled and stay within character limits to make clicking through unnecessary. They hit when they hit and are never promoted.

@jsonbecker You are definitely dropping some truth bombs this week and helping me rethink certain assumptions I have been making for my blogging.

@annahavron I’m sure no one wants to read 1000 word posts on their timeline hence I appreciate the 500 char limit. However, I do wish the truncation were done in a more UX-friendly way.

@pratik It me! I work very hard to stay within the character cap for the timeline. If I need to say more, it’s probably going to be longer blog post on my “main” blog or just added as a reply to the first post.

@jsonbecker This sounds very healthy.

@pratik I don’t feel guilty, but I assume most won’t click through

@pratik I have long stopped character checking my posts to fit a timeline. I do my job writing however much I want. Timeline does its job rendering it the way it wants. No guilt :)

@amit Agreed. Just roll with it, @pratik. If it contracts, it contracts.

Would be nice if contracted posts looked better, though, like keeping the links and formatting.

@toddgrotenhuis @amit @miljko Fair enough. It’s something I have to get over. I’ll not wait for Micro.blog to tweak its timeline design.

@jarrod Nice to know I’m not the only one but judging from what everyone else said, I’m going to change.

@pratik Good luck! 👍 I hope you’ll follow up sometime on if/how your thinking changes