NEWS: I Blog, I Tweet, But Why

I Blog, I Tweet, But Why

from Feld Thoughts by brad@feld.com

Fred Wilson has a great post up today titled Can We Live In Public?  If you go back in time to May 4, 2004 when I started blogging, you'll see that Fred was one of the key inspirations with his postTransparency to my question of To Blog or Not to Blog.  At the time, my interest came from a very simple place.

I'm a professional emailer / phonecaller / meeting taker (aka a venture capitalist). Much of my time is spend writing, reading, thinking, talking, and learning. As a result, I've been fascinated (and deeply involved) with the evolution of email and web-based communication and technologies.

I just wanted to learn how this stuff worked.  Blogging, RSS, user generated content.  All the corresponding web-based tools and technologies that were emerging in 2004.  To me, learning how this stuff worked wasn't just reading about it and observing, but actually participating.  UGC was a big part of it - I believed that I wouldn't really understand it unless I was a content creator.  So, while my blogging was motivated by transparency, my meta-goal was ultimately a selfish one - to learn.

I massively underestimated the value of this to me.  When I reflect on the last four years of my blogging, it's been one of the most interesting, enlightening, stimulating, and - ultimately - rewarding things that I've done professionally.  It's resulted in new investments, new friends, lots of stimuli I doubt I ever would have encountered, plenty of healthy conflict that has caused me to think through things I otherwise wouldn't have thought much about, and an outlet for my desire to write that is clearly aligned with what I do every day for work. ...

Can We Live In Public?

from A VC : Venture Capital and Technology by Fred

At the start of this decade, Josh Harris (always ahead of his time) created a experimental web video project called We Live In Public.

Ed: I've always wondered how VCs can have opinions without first hand experience. Brad and Fred lead the new generation of do-er investors.