Another nutshell post!
Twitter says posts must not have titles and can't be longer than 140 characters. Posts cannot contain HTML markup.
Google Reader said posts must have titles, and are assumed to be essay length. Posts may have HTML markup.
Facebook says posts may not have titles or markup but can be as long as you like.
No discourse on Google Reader, grunts and snorts on Twitter, good engagement on Facebook.
None of these are great for receiving all of what we were posting to our blogs before they came about. The APIs are inconsistent, but at least they have them.
Along comes Medium, which could be great. They handle markup, titles, and lately no titles required. Any length. Great! But no API. Oh geez.
Tumblr and WordPress do a pretty good job of holding onto the energy of blogs, all things considered.
Just imagine if one of Twitter and Facebook had tried to really harmonize with blogs, how much smoother everything would be. We could have archives and post to our friends, who could read our gems in place without clicking on links, which they've proved over and over in so many ways they don't like to do. (How many times do you get comments on Twitter and Facebook that react to the title, ignoring the content probably because they didn't click.)
There seems to be some hope Facebook might put an API on their upcoming Medium-like service, or perhaps this will inspire Medium to put an API on theirs. Or Twitter could ease up on the 140-char limit, allow markup. Any number of things could put blogging back in business.
It would be nice to have a friend among the Silicon Valley tech elite.