The one thing about writing here that is interesting to me is the embedded social aspect. I feel like it lets me discover new people more easily and in return let other new people discover me. I've liked that since I started really looking at how the following and followers thing works within this environment. I am now regularly getting inspiration from a whole different group of people -- I still have my RSS reader for staying current with my more traditional groups, but now I also get the chance to see a different view in an ongoing fashion via my Typepad dashboard. I guess its the little things that make me smile.
Yesterday I noticed that I had gotten a Tweet from the people at the NYTimes after my post on the NYTimes Skimmer being released ... I'm pretty sure that would have happened on my WP blog because of the Tweet getting pushed, but this is the kind of thing that writing in a social space that belongs to you promotes -- getting noticed and feedback from new people because of connections to networks.
What I have now is a layered network environment ... a space the affords me my personal content management environment that is connected at its core to the people that are following me here via TypePad and immediate access to my Twitter and Facebook networks one step out. I think the first order nature of the embedded social construct is what is missing from self hosted services and even from our own implementation of the Blogs at PSU. I think there is a lot to learn from studying how connecting to various levels of audiences can influence writing and posting.