Nasty, brutish and

In the early days of this blog, I wrote a lot of short posts: ideas, links, stories, each a couple paragraphs at most. Then, over time and under the influence of smart online writers like [Clay Shirky](http://shirky.com/writings/), I started to move towards longer pieces. Those were fewer and further between. And, it turns out, once I started posting things less frequently, I easily sled to posting even less frequently than that.

I’m still unsure of the balance between quality and quantity – whether a thoughtful few pieces are better than a quickly dashed off tide of them. And I’m also still not certain of where this blog – or blogging in general – fits into a world that’s now dominated by Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Even a few paragraphs seems anachronistically long by now, though also barely enough to express any even vaguely meaningful idea.

Still, with the press around [Clive Thompson’s new book](http://amzn.com/B00C5R7AJK), I stumbled back across [his pitch for the value of ambient information](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). In light of that, and of [Om Malik’s smart piece about the growing power of social media brand in the VC world](http://gigaom.com/2013/09/24/day-traders-angels-and-venture-capital-the-internet-changes-everything-including-money/), I’m thinking it’s worth at least testing out again what frequent and short looks like here.

Away we go.