Have you considered blogging on X but wished the character limit would allow long-form posts? A fix may be in the works.
X, the social media platform formally known as Twitter, may be hoping bloggers will embrace its newest feature. TheMessenger reports a new feature known as “Articles” could allow blogging on X.
The report credits Taiwanese journalist Fausto Chou, who said it has renamed its “Notes” feature to “Articles.” Chou linked to a couple of examples of long-form posts here and here. X’s own Help Center, however, calls the feature “Twitter Write.” Given that it still carries the “Twitter” name suggests that an update is due. It could still become “X Write” or “X Articles.”
At the moment, the feature is open only in a “closed test” to what X calls “a small group of writers.” The platform says those writers “will help us learn how best to support people who come to write on Twitter.”
The biggest question about anything “long-form” on that platform would focus on character limits. Let’s face it: Twitter began at only 140 characters allowed in a tweet. For Articles, X says titles will have a 100-character limit. The actual articles themselves will allow up to 2,500 characters.
Blogging on X might seem like a good idea; Please don’t
I see articles all the time about which social media platform is the best choice for blogging. That’s like asking which dishwasher is the best choice for cooking.
You shouldn’t blog on social media. That is to say, a social media platform shouldn’t be the home of your blog.
When you post on social media, you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox. If that sandbox owner decides he doesn’t want you on his platform, he can just knock you down. Poof. There goes your “blog.” (It was never a blog if it was in a social media stream. It was just a string of social posts.)
Some like to call blogging on social media “microblogging.” I suppose that’s a little better. But it’s still not the same as actual blogging.
If you’re going to blog, for heaven’s sake, get a domain of your own and software like WordPress that you install on it. Then you host your own content.
Don’t rely on a different platform to host your content. It’s too easy to lose all your content that way.
I self-host this blog on my own domain through WordPress software. I don’t have to answer to some website editor about what some reader might call “offensive.”
I’ve told you before about what happened to a fellow blogger on an AOL blogging platform. One complaint — which was never made clear — led an over-eager AOL editor to delete that blogger’s files. All of them. In one fell swoop. The blogger never had the chance to remove the offensive file (or files). His content was just gone.
Irreversibly deleted.
My pick was WordPress because it’s the most versatile blogging platform. My pick was self-hosted WordPress because I control my site and its content.
Yes, you can “blog” on social media — even X if and when it opens up whatever it’s going to call that feature. But you do so at your own peril. (And your content’s.)
You have to ask yourself whether you should ever want to take that risk.
