Feed Me

No, this has nothing to do with RSS at all.

I've just noticed that quite a few people have been moving to Multiply lately. This is rather understandable, as Multiply holds packages for blog, photo, music and video displays where Blogger mostly concentrates on its namesake. Some stalwarts remain with their blogspot addresses, however, and that's where I'm encountering my current mode of indecision.

You see, Multiply has a small feature that allows people to reflect their Blogger posts on their Multiply web site. From what I understand, the feature can access your Blogger account as long as you hand over your username and password: All you have to do is open up the Cross-Posting option, and suddenly you have an alternate weblog.

The catch is, I keep asking myself if I need an alternate weblog. It's bad enough worrying about how to update one web site -- so why torture yourself by establishing a second one, even if it does give you better access to photos and such? I don't even have photos to put up online, for that matter. (That's 'cause it might traumatize the kids, of course.)

I know that my posts have grown in terms of complexity over the last couple of years, for one. While I'm sure that Multiply won't roll over and die from a few snippets of HTML code, having my posts reflected there will require me to double-check two sites for layout consistency. There's also the matter of the right-hand sidebar here, which can't really be fed into Multiply; If I do set up a Blogger feed, then I'm going to have to customize the sidebar from scratch.

And then there's the primary readership issue that comes by having two sites with the same content. I'm more than a little concerned at dividing what little audience I have into two different areas: Will this increase the number of readers I get? Cut it down further? Open the door to spam and other minor irritations? Split my already-fractured mind into two distinct personalities? While I don't intend to prioritize reader traffic at the moment, practical considerations still require that I take note of the possibility.

But if people are mirroring their writings on Multiply, then there's probably some overwhelming advantage to it that I'm not seeing right now. It's most likely something that hasn't entered my mind at the moment; In fact, I'm betting that it'll probably come up at the last moment in some idle, friendly dinner somewhere.

Or, failing that, it'll hit me a little too late to take advantage of it. Such is life, I figure.

In the meantime, all I have up on my Multiply site is a familiar-looking profile picture, an empty home page, and a weird-looking apology letter. In a sense, that's pretty much the same thing I have up on my LiveJournal account -- and I ended up forgetting about the latter for about a year or so. That's not a good sign.

What's next, anyway? Xanga? PmWiki? There are a lot of personal toolsets out there on the World Wide Web, and I get the feeling that most of them will be hating me before the end of next year comes up.

On the other hand, I could always show them a picture. That always gets them running away. :)