Newsfeeds have won the web in many ways. We see them everywhere on the web:
- Search results
- Email and message inbox
- Social media newsfeeds
- Podcast apps
- Blogs
Newsfeeds have a few common properties:
- Includes a title, image, link, and/or description
- Has an order determined by an algorithm that often includes some measure of chronology, quality, and engagement
- Allow you to quickly sample the items in the feed by scrolling
Newsfeeds are powerful because:
- They're addictive
- It's easy to see what's new from a person you've subscribed
The downside of newsfeeds are:
- The algorithms are typically designed to maximize ad revenue profit, not learning
- They present information in a fragmented way
- They don't evolve
- They surface the most recent info, which leaves out the rest of history
- They're fleeting
- Owned by a large, centralized entity with the ability to censor you
Digital gardens, in many ways, are the opposite of newsfeeds:
- Timeless
- Accretive
- Richly interconnected
- Owned by you
Digital gardens and newsfeeds are complementary:
- They go better together. Their weaknesses cancel each other out while their strengths multiply each other.
- You can repurpose content. You can use the same content on the newsfeed and in your digital garden.
- They can help you think from more angles. Writing for Twitter forces shortness. Writing for a newsfeed forces you to think about the packaging of your idea so it stands out. Writing for a digital garden helps you think through the idea more deeply.