There’s so much talk these days about blogging being dead. Many people are turning to microblogging or using free services like Posterous or Tumblr instead of hosting a blog of their own. Quite a few people who are still keen to blog turn to free blogging services like Blogger or WordPress.

These are all great services! They all rock for different reasons, but what happens to your content if they close their doors? You get what you pay for.

Here’s how to Backup your tweets

I use Tumblr and Tweetake to backup my tweets. This way I have an archive of the content I created over the years. It is our content that we must protect. Twitter owns your tweets, you don’t. Facebook owns your status updates, you don’t.

When you write a blog post on your blog you control your content. You can send your friends, fans and followers to your blog post via Twitter, Facebook or however else you choose, but the point is that you control your content.

I use WordPress, but I pay for my own hosting. I backup my content regularly, so I am confident that should something go wrong, I’ll be able to restore things.

Ask yourself this: Am I in control of my content, or is someone else?

How comfortable are you with your answer?

Photo from Flickr by: tarop

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme‘s HTML.

We used Tumblr extensively leading up to and during our recent CESBOUND.com road trip. Our ninja web designer created a custom Tumblr template that rocks. Each of us used our iPhones to post updates, pictures, quotes, video and audio to our Tumblr account in real time. It was perfect for a road trip.

Tumblr is also perfect if you want to create a quick blog. I’ve recently created two new ones, Music Dave Loves, which automatically posts music I “love” using Last.FM and Dave’s Shared Items, which aggregates my Google Shared Items. I encourage you to subscribe to the feed if you’re interested in what I’m interested in.

If you’re looking for a way to share things you should consider using Tumblr.

Tonight we held the first Tool Talk, a monthly round table discussion on tech tools.

Tool Talk is based on a first come first serve basis, so watch this space for news on how to RSVP for the next one in August.

The discussion tonight included some of Nashville’s brightest minds on (and off) the web.

The file is available below to listen to, but please note that this is not a professional recording.

A big thank you goes out to everyone who were kind enough to participate tonight.

I’ve included each person and their favorite tools below. Enjoy the conversation.

*** Kate O’Neill – [meta]marketer

- Remember The Milk – online to do list and task management.
- Evernote – remember everything.

*** Rex Hammock – Hammock Inc. / Small Business . COM

- Eye-Fi – wireless photo and video uploads from your camera to your computer and to the web
- Skitch – fast and fun screen capture and image sharing
- ecto – blog editor for Mac OS X
- Posterours – The place to post everything. Just email us. Dead simple blog by email
- Zemanta – We suggest tags, links, photos, and related articles. You save time and aspirin.

*** Chris Ennis – Function Interactive / Nashmash

- TokBox – free video chat and messaging
- Google Wave -  a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

*** Mitch Canter – Studio Nashvegas

Windows Live Writer – Windows Live Writer team blog
Freshbooks – online invoicing, time tracking and expense service

WordPress:
All In One SEO – optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
WordPress Database Backup – WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables.
CForms II – a powerful and feature rich form plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.
Twitter Tools – Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.
Super Cache – generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog.
Exec PHP – The Exec-PHP plugin executes PHP code in posts, pages and text widgets.
Front Page Excluded Categories – a basic plugin that excludes posts in one or more categories from appearing on the front page.

*** Dave Delaney – that’s me. :-)

- Disqus – a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites.
- Tumblr – the easiest way to blog.

*** Allison Groves – Sitening / SheWrites

Twitter:
- TweetDeck – your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more
- Seesmic Desktop – build your community
- Tweetie Desktop – Twitter client for Mac

- Ning – lets you create and join new social networks for your interests and passions.

Ning bashing ensues…. you’ll need to listen to learn more.

*** Chuck Bryant – Border Jump

- TripIt.com – online travel itinerary and trip planner
- HootSuite – the ultimate Twitter toolbox. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.
- Fluid – Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard

*** Eric Schuff – Tennessean

- CoTweet – CoTweet is a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter.
- Publish2 – The Web’s largest newsroom: Journalists collaborate to curate the news.
- Coda – Text editor + file transfer + svn + CSS + Terminal + Books + More = Whoah.
- Espresso – PHP tool
- Yammer – Enterprise microblogging
- Feedly – weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page.

Thanks again to everyone who participated. I’ll be posting details on the next Tool Talk.

Listen to episode one of Tool Talk here.