Phone Your Blog
A broken telephone I saw while wandering around Bangkok
It’s happened to all of us. The night starts off innocently enough with a little gin and tonic, maybe a mojito, then next thing you know you’re doing tequila shots with the bartender and the girl from Brazil and you find yourself thinking it would be a treMENdous idea to call up your ex and see how they’re doing and perhaps impress them with your newfound wit.
We’ve got the cure. Now, instead of drunk dialing random friends, lovers, and acquaintances one at a time, what if you could dial your blog and talk to the whole world at once? It’d be like something out of Star Trek.
The future is now, folks. You can now go to your My Blogs tab, enable Post by Voice, and get a special number and code to call your blog. After you’re done, the audio file from your phone call will be posted to your blog for all to listen to and enjoy. (And added to your RSS feed for podcast support.)
So now you can post to your WordPress via the web, email, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, desktop clients, and now any telephone in the world. Of course when you post it can be pushed to Facebook, Twitter, and more using the Publicize feature. What more could you want?
Right now this is completely free, but we’ll charge you money to take down posts. Just kidding! We’re making it free and allowing recording lengths up to sixty minutes, but that limit may go down without a paid upgrade in the future. Mostly we’re just curious to see how people use this.
I have a few ideas myself, but to find out you’ll have to listen to this voice post:
- July 1, 2010
- Mobile, New Features, Posting
WordPress.com News 
I saw this on Twitter, and I thought it was a joke. But what an idea! If only the blog could talk back when you call.
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Any chance to add support for numbers around the world? I only got a US phone number to call which is slightly expensive from the UK!
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We may look into this in the future. Numbers outside the US are quite expensive to add to the service.
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this seems dangerous 🙂
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Awesome – but I think you need some sort of AGC on the recording to bump the volume up as this is really quiet.
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This is definitely mysterious and fascinating, Matt.
Would these voice posts be indexed by Google and become searchable in some way?
Is that ending beep part of every one of these voice posts as a finish marker or something?
I love how WordPress.com keeps becoming more and feature rich! Thank you!
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The ending beep is the recording catching the # key press at the end. You can get away from this by being silent for 10 seconds at the end of the recording or by hanging up to finish.
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Wow…this sounds MOST interesting!!!!
Sometimes, “writing” on a phone is really the most unhappening thing to happen!!!
You have given a perfect solution for that!!! AWESOME!
You guys seriously rock!!!
Thanks a ton!!!!
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Would a media upgrade be required to post the resulting file?
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Only if you have run out of upload space.
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LOL Guys this is awesome! It can only be better if you for example create an iPhone app that allows posting buy voice via wifi! 🙂
PS: Posting by voice is really awesome and clever. Thank you!
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Next up, drunk dial in comments. Since Gravatar knows my telephone number now, wouldn’t be too much more difficult would it Matt? 😀
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Good, quite late though (tumblr and posterous already had it).
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You are so generous Mr. Matt. Thank you for sharing this with all of us at WordPress. It sounds wonderful. We are so fortunate to be a part of your wonderful network. But I think we all know that…..:>) Elena “Just My Thoughts.”
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THAT.
IS.
FREAK-ILY.
AWESOME.
jane
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Yes, dangerous and awesome. What a great thing! Thanks.
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Different..
Adventurous 🙂
Uncanny 8-]
Safe?? (scratch- scratch)
Interesting 😉
.. If I could post my voice and record different intonation to all the expressions.. here in comment too..
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Sounds like fun. Can´t wait to hear it, – have you made a test call for us?
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Check the bottom of the post. 😉
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Awesome – could you add some speech recognition as well … I’d prefer german language. Then I needn’t do all the typing any more and do more posts … 😀
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This is fantastic. I never regret subscribing to WP….You guys are the best…Cheers!
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When you thought this up, what were you drinking?
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“Right now this is completely free, but we’ll charge you money to take down posts. Just kidding!”
Oh Matt, you had me laughing out loud with that one!
I agree that the volume needs upped, I had to turn mine up crazy high to hear your recording.
That aside, I think this is a neat idea. It kind of falls into “Wow we live in a world where we can do this kind of stuff.” 🙂
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I’m a bit of a soft-talker, I probably should have spoken up for the recording.
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Really nice… absolutely a super new feature 😀
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Audio quality is very poor, volume too low, and your speaking style enabled me to recognize 6 or 8 words. Otherwise, clever idea. I predict that you’ll get some very short, jumbled blogs. How about inserting some speech recognition software.
Glenn
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You are making it too easy to embarrass oneself!
I am glad sometimes for that cooling down time between- when I think it and when I write it. Especially when I have been oiled a bit with a Manhattan!
Now it will be immediate— I bet the blogs will be very interesting though.
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Oh my. I… I’m not sure if I canokayI’lltryit.
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Most deranged idea I’ve heard in quite some time – utterly crass.
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FREAKING AWESOME!! Keep it going!!
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“next thing you know you’re doing tequila shots with the bartender and the girl from Brazil”
Oooh yeah Matt, that happens to me all the time. The women from Brazil know’s whats up!
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For journalists with on-the-spot news without webcams, this is a great idea! For drunks, this sounds like a horrible idea, especially if the blog is work-related, but also hilarious ;3
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Beam me up, Scotty…all of you Rock! I am proud and happy to call this place home.
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Ok this is soooooooo cool. I am definitely going to be using this. Especially when I am in a rush and need to tell my readers something. This is a great idea. Awesome.
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As you’ve described it, Matt, Mojito induced voice message broadcast over a blog to your ex – whoa!
Hope you’ve built in a “use at your own risk” disclaimer!
And you gave me a good laugh with your “just kidding” about incurring a fee to remove a message from the blog (presumably the next day when the affects of the decision make the decision seem not such a great idea after all!)
But as always with WordPress – excellent technology, potentially great idea.
I think I’ll belt out a tune for my first try at it!
Keep on keeping on WP –
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no way… that’s crazy amazing! haven’t been that excited about a wordpress improvement in a while… though honestly my blog is very photo based but still. i’ll be an avid reader of those phone blog posts.
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Sucks that this is not available for us wordpress.org users.
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I love it. What a great idea. Now I can interview cool people as well.
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That’s a very easy way to embarrass yourself in front of the whole world. Call me old fashioned but I’m just going to stick with regular text and typing.
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This is going to be good! 🙂
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This is a good innovation after a long time. Although from evolutionary perspective, the audio should have been popularized prior to the video, which youtube did, but either case, the blogging via audio using the new technologies is a good evolutionary step. I only wish you had approached video the same way (make it plenty, make it easy and make it available for free like you tube) but IMHO, premium videopress was a missed opportunity given the success of chatroulette etc.
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OMG, this is madness 🙂
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WordPress.com is really bring us cutting edge features! Now I’m not too keen on getting drunk and talking to my blog, but I see phoning the blog could be a useful feature for a number of us. Thanks for your staying current with new possibilities.
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Wow, that’s a cool new function! With that you can create some amazing things on your blog. Thanks!
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I used to use a similar feature on LJ but they provided us with a UK number (eventually). I think only paid accounts allowed phone posts though. I’d LOVE to post something by phone but I’m not going to ring the US to do it.
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I may just have to give up drinking now!!!!
Thanks for your continuous hard work and innovative features..
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Hmmm… maybe when you speak, there should be a breathalyzer? Or at least a “read back ” and “are you SURE that you want to make this public”? last chance bail out option.
Of course, the other side of the coin is enabling the camera phone feature to enhance the experience.
Thanks WordPress.
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Omgomgomg! This might be the most awesome thing I’ve heard of in a long time 😛 PLEASE add international numbers (Sweden in particular 😉 ).
Oh, and it would be great if the recording didn’t post right away if you didn’t want it to. I’d like to use this wonderful feature to record drafts as a sort of memo thing, when you don’t have a computer or pen with you 😀
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I like Sarah Baram’s idea of having blogs talk back. It would be interesting to listen to my blog by phone.
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This is just genius! The quality is poor but it’d be great for important notices you want to post on your blog quickly! I’ve had some important notices that I had to put up on my blog in a hurry, but I wasn’t near my computer so I had to use my Kindle e-reader’s internet. Do you have any idea how slow that is? The brilliant thing about this new feature is that it’s so obvious that no one ever thinks of it! There should be a separate WordPress number that, when you call, says something like: “Hello. Please type in your username and press 1, then type in your password and press 2.” Then, when you type in your username and password, it should say: “You have had 63 views today. 54 click have been reported on your blog. 34 people used search engine terms to find your blog. You have 7 new comments, 3 of which are spam. Press 1 to hear what search engine terms have been used to locate your blog. Press 2 to hear what links have been clicked. Press 3 to hear the 7 new comments. Press 4 to phone your blog.” I think something like that would be EXTREMELY helpful!
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Hmmm….I agree with the dangerous part…the upgrade should include having phone “relations” (keeping this clean)….especially if you’re lacking in this dept. not that I am admitting anything….
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Very interesting, and I must never ever be allowed to use it.
For the next feature, can you get my blog to phone me back, or get it come and pick me up from the bar?
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This is supernice!!! I look forward to try it out. 🙂
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Hi! Thank you very much! It is working from Germany within seconds! Great!
Ruthie
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I think Little Professor’s idea about notification of comments/views today when calling the blog by voice number is a good one.
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Oooh, drunk dialling your blog… Could be dangerous and ultimately traumatizing. Yikes.
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I am glad I quite drinking. You are serious about this right? TOO INCREDIBLE!
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oh that’s just too hilarious. LOVE IT!!
can i name my next child wordpress?
Oh yeah, i can’t have anymore. durnit!
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If you need someone to talk with – pass a call to your blog?
🙂
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“Come here Watson!” Nice voice Matt, fun idea I’ll have to wrap my mind around this and see what I can come up with. I like your idea to see what people do in the wee hours of the morning and also charging a fee to take down posts. :+) That could really turn out to be a good little side business!
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I cannot tell you how much I love this idea. THANK YOU!
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Here’s why I love this idea. I live in Houston and before/during/after Hurricane Ike I used email to let friends and family know how we were faring. One reason I started my blog is so that I could just post about our situation and let friends and family check in on us. Once the power went out…no more status reports. Through it all, though, we never lost phone service. So if a hurricane strikes again, I can let everyone know how we’re doing with one phone call to my blog. Brilliant!
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Are there any plans to add this to Self-Hosted WordPress as a plugin or a feature in a future update to 3.0?
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Nothing planned right now.
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Great idea. I can already image how it can be misused, not that I will be doing that 😉
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Very cool! But wait, calling the special number would be free or uploading the content to your blog would be free? Or is it both?
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You’ll be subject to any phone changes for the phone call. Recording the audio and posting it to your blog is free.
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Awesome! So if I’m in a poetic mood and an inspiration comes up, I could record my voice through my phone!
[Sample poem: Roses are red, violets are blue. What’s my password! Wished I knew!]
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Wohoo, I love this idea! I am totally using this for my travel blog, making it eas- …….crap, I live in Europe.
Back to iPhone recordings and long hiatuses it is.
But great idea!
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Fantastic! We are looking forward to talkblog’n.
Thanks from all of us at TodaysMinute.com
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ok this is insane! and so wild to listen to Matt’s voice telling me all these ideas of what to do!
I’m thinking I could phone in my lectures for class and stay home and blog while my students increase my page views!
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lol FLynn! What a great idea! But for reasons outlined in paragraph 1 of this post, it’s a feature that I best not be using.
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So you don’t have to pay extra for it? This would be great for convention reports, and I’m going to one next weekend.
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How good of you WP to give people the opportunity to share with the world their drunken rants 😀 . I think I’ll refrain for now. You never know when Washington institutes PWI–Posting While Intoxicated.
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i really like this! Just one problem.
I don’t live in th us, enabling this via wifi would be really great!
Thanks for this awesome feature anyway.
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I might be overstating, but this has the potential to be revolutionary in some cases (in others it’ll just junk up the internet with more noise). Either way, bravo WP team.
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Thanks! The idea of audioblogging is thus around the corner, and should offer yet other wonderful communication qpportunities. Welcome back to good old oral tradition.
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Fantastic innovation – well done Matt and the team.
Going to try it soon.
But agree with a couple of the other comments that having some sort of Pending option would be a bonus.
Regards to all,
Paul H
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This is like the voice post feature in LJ! OMG! But it’s totally MORE AWESOME IN WORDPRESS! THANKS GUYS :))
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Just an update.
Tried it and it works very well.
Even better, once the ‘post’ has appeared on your Blog, you can then amend the status to Draft, Pending, etc. plus add some text, categories. Presumably, one could also weave a number of audio files into a single Post with supportive text.
Very, very cool!
Paul H
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This is a great idea! And you may add a special feature of voice-over option for those of us that don’t have a great speaking voice.
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Its the end of the world as we know it -AGAIN! So can i skype my blog?
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You can use Skype to call the phone number.
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Really cool I’m gonna try using my softphone to see how crappy it actually sounds when I call people on it lol many uses for this one.
Thanks Lisa
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One thing though will we be able to use it in the comments too?
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There is not an option to use it for comments.
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Fantastic feature! We will soon start to sail again from Portugal via Cape Verde, to Brazil and south to the Falklands, Argentina, South Georgia to South Africa and over back to Brazil, we keep a blog in Swedish. Since we will be at sea a whole lot, approximately 100 days this feature came in a LOT more then handy. Writing blog post over a satellite link with a price of 5 USD/post and 1 USD / minute will do make an easy choise on our shoestring budget 😉
Thanks for the amazing feature!
Keep up the good work!
/Andreas, Captain on Nemoofsweden. (wordpress).com
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So, what about the cost for doing this? Terms & Condition applied to where our country is or strictly in the US dude?
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The only cost you could have is for the phone call. If you are unsure about the costs to a US number I would recommend contacting your phone provider before using the feature.
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Strange idea — I’m not sure I even want to know what the developers were thinking at the time they decided to write it! Perhaps they were actually thinking along the lines of the opening paragraphs of this blog entry. Scary.
Nevertheless, this feature could come in handy, I suppose. I can picture a blogger covering a live event, wanting to get something important up on his blog as soon as possible, or perhaps the same blogger might want to demonstrate the surrounding sounds of the venue. Not sure this feature will catch on, but it’s certainly something to watch. Very interesting.
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Bravo to you, Matt, and to WordPress. A very simple idea that could likely spread like fire all over the internet… (“fire” being metaphorical, hier.)
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How can I use this nice feature from Skype? Please, I would like to know.
Thanks!
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Yes, you can call the phone number from Skype just like any other phone number. Charges may apply in your Skype account.
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Very interesting and tempting,.. Unfortunately I’m so far away from US… 😀
It will cost me quite a lot of money!!
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“Phone Your Blog” to me , sounds great. “Practice Makes Perfect”.
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Wow….the future is now! I’m never one to talk on the phone too much but I think I might start now that I’ll have something to say. But will anyone listen is the question……LOL
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That is brilliant! I can’t wait to try this out… 🙂
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Nice feature. The idea here is not to embarrass yourself by drunk-dialing few people, do it on large scale by posting it on the web. I wonder how much alcohol was consumed before the idea for this feature came about.
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I’m not a big fan of this idea. I came to WordPress to write. But somebody’s happy about it, and that’s all that matters.
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Very cool guys! I love Twilio and the API. Any plans to enable the transcript mode allowing users to call and have their voice turned into text? I could see that also being a very useful feature.
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Not right now. Maybe later. We’ll see how popular the feature is.
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WOW.. keep blowing our minds away WordPress.
This will definitely eliminate “writer’s block”… because there’s no such thing as “speaker’s block”. 😀
Now this is real social media, the world is turning into something else.
Great job guys.
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The coolest thing since homemade ice cream!!!
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i siddenly imagined if i was drunken and publicize a random ranting blog =_=a
but it’s fun to try XD
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Oh ya, i know exactly how we’re going to use this at Creating Answers ~ A Blog on Financial Clarity! Thanks!
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