When I built Jottings, I had to answer a fundamental question: what's the right unit of thought for the indie web?
Not a tweet. Not a blog post. Something in between.
I called it a "jot."
The Name Matters
A jot is what you do in a notebook when you want to remember something without overthinking it. You jot down a note. You jot down an idea. You don't "blog" down an idea. That word implies effort, editing, optimization—which is the opposite of what I was going for.
Tweets, on the other hand, come with baggage. They live in a feed that's sorted by an algorithm designed to keep you scrolling. They disappear in the noise. They're ephemeral by design. Twitter wants you to post constantly, to engage, to compete for attention.
A jot is different. It's yours. It stays put.
Why Jots Win
Here's the problem with the three categories of written thought:
Tweets are too fast. They're designed for immediate reaction, not reflection. 280 characters forces you to be witty or controversial. The platform rewards sensationalism. Half an hour later, your tweet is buried under thousands of others, seen by maybe 5% of your followers, forgotten by 99% of the internet.
Blog posts are too heavy. They require a catchy headline, compelling hook, SEO optimization, and enough length to be "worth it." You need a cover image. You need to promote it. You need to hope people actually read more than the first paragraph. Most blogs feel like work.
Jots are just right. They're substantial enough to matter. Substantial enough to find in search engines. Substantial enough to make a point. But not so substantial that you need to convince yourself it's worth the effort.
A jot can be:
- A quick thought (500 words or 50 words—doesn't matter)
- A link to something cool you found, with your take on it
- A photo with a caption that tells a story
- A quote that hit you, with a moment of reflection
It's not about length. It's about authenticity. You're not writing for an algorithm. You're writing it down.
The Three Types
Jottings gives you three ways to express yourself:
Text Jots are your default. Write what you want—a thought, an observation, a rant, a reflection. There's no minimum or maximum. But here's the thing: there's no algorithm pushing your longer jots to more people. Your jots all get the same treatment. So you write what you actually think, not what you think will get engagement.
Link Jots are for sharing something from the internet with your own commentary. You paste a URL, Jottings fetches the title and preview automatically, and you add your thoughts. It's like a personal Hacker News, except you're the only editor.
Photo Jots are for visual moments. A sunset, your desk, your coffee, your cat. The platform supports it natively—no fighting with aspect ratios or having your photo compressed to oblivion. Your photos stay crisp and full-quality.
The 10-Digit ID
Here's a detail that matters: every jot gets a unique 10-digit numeric ID.
This comes from my previous project, micromusings. Those numbers aren't arbitrary. They're a statement: your jots are permanent. They're not auto-incrementing database IDs that might get recycled. They're globally unique, numeric identifiers that will work forever.
A jot with ID 1234567890 can be linked. It can be referenced. It can live in your site's URL structure for the next decade without breaking. When you own your platform, permanence isn't something you pay extra for or opt into. It's the default.
Why This Matters
We've outsourced our thoughts to platforms that don't respect them.
Tweets evaporate. Medium articles get hidden behind paywalls. LinkedIn posts become engagement bait. Your Instagram photos get compressed and buried. TikToks disappear when the algorithm decides they're old.
With Jottings, your jots are yours. They have permanent URLs. They appear in search results. They build up over time into something that feels like a real archive—because it is one. And if you ever want to move them somewhere else? You can. They're just static HTML. The simplest, most portable format in the world.
Finding Your Voice Again
There's freedom in not trying to optimize for an algorithm. You can write a 1,000-word jot if you want. You can write a 50-word jot. You can write one jot per week or five per day. Nobody's telling you what "works."
This is what I missed about the old internet. Before we all became content creators trying to maximize engagement. Before our thoughts became fodder for recommendation engines.
A jot is just a thought. Your thought. Put somewhere permanent that belongs to you.
Ready to start jotting? Give Jottings a try for free and reclaim your writing. If you like it, upgrade to Pro to support independent software and add your custom domain.
Let's bring back the personal web, one jot at a time.