The Gnolia Blog
Where the Gnolia community meets to discuss social bookmarking and online life.
Now, By Another Name
I remember in the early Spring of 2005 Todd Sieling and I were trying to come up with a name for what would become this community. What word captures the granular serendipity emergent from the chaos of human relations? I can’t remember which one of us thought of it, but we both found it reflected in the spirit of PT Anderson’s Magnolia. It’s one of my favorite movies, and one that Todd himself had introduced to me years ago when I was living in Vancouver.
Still, I would be mistaken to confuse sentimental attachment to a word and the history it represents for the very real character of the community behind it. Running this service is truly a labor of love, especially in its current (re)incarnation. My work here is to provide a salon for this community of like-minded, or sometimes not-so-likeminded folks; and, also to do my small part advancing of the open web by exploring and supporting emergent standards and protocols, like Microformats, OAuth, and OpenID.
So, as you may have read, last week Magnolia, the makers of Magnolia CMS, requested that I change the name of this service. While it’s not something I would otherwise choose to do, I’ve decided that it is simply best to rename.
As of today, this is Gnolia.
I like to keep the G silent, like Gnosis – still apt.
With that, let us all focus on the forest and the path forward.
Posted by Larry on October 5, 2009 | 8 comments | Mark This Post
By Any Other Name
First: I promise not to start every blog post with a tweet.
Second: This second blog post, a week after relaunch, was meant to cover items of substance: what’s changed, where there are still some sharp corners, how to get support, etc…
Third: Instead, this morning I found myself at the receiving end of a letter from Magnolia Americas, which you will find reproduced below.
Continued...Posted by Larry on September 29, 2009 | 22 comments | Mark This Post
Equinox
Summer hours shorten,
Fall hours grow like a flower,
Petals unfurling.
And with a haiku posted to Twitter just just a couple of hours before the Autumnal Equinox, Ma.gnolia is reborn.
If you’re reading this blog, you likely know the story about Ma.gnolia’s first incarnation as a public social bookmarking service, and how it ended. If not, please check out this Citizen Garden Podcast and this blog post by Todd Sieling, Ma.gnolia’s former product manager and all around make-it-happen-er.
With Ma.gnolia’s relaunch come lessons learned and changes, and among the most obvious and important is that it is no longer a doors-wide-open public service. I’m currently inviting old Ma.gnolia members to return, along with others who might be interested. Soon, those Ma.gnolia members will be able to send out their own invitations.
Continued...Posted by Larry on September 23, 2009 | 14 comments | Mark This Post
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