May 29, 2010
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Why We Blog (whether we realize it or not)
I heard a quote from John Mayer on the radio saying that he was considering deleting his Twitter account because he wanted to remove his need for external validation. Hearing this made me realize that a major purpose of social networking sites, and the reason why they are so popular, is that they fill our need for external validation. Even make it grow, especially in the internet generation where fame is more achievable than ever.
Before Facebook or Twitter, we didn’t have a need to post summaries of our days, our favorite song lyrics, or our deepest secrets on the internet in 140 characters or less and expect a comment or two or ten.
It’s the same reason we blog here on Xanga. If your site is public, it’s likely you crave comments. Even those of you who say you write for yourselves; You could ”write for yourself” just as easily in a journal with a lock and key. The point of a public blog is the comments (and the discussions they create). And those comments give us external validation.
But this brings up another topic:
