I finally started posting at my blog properly today. I made a start with all the material I've posted so far here at Blogcritics, well the main articles - I admit about half of what I write here is comments in response to others' articles.
Up until today, the last post on my personal blog was waaaay back in something like April I think.
Today, thanks to the blogcritics article about Google numbers, I checked my name (ok slightly shortened but anyway) "Jon Downs" and, amongst all the college sports people and a few others, my personal blog site comes...top! I assume it's at least partly down to the host (blogspot.com) and of course Blogcritics. So I decided it was about time I started using it - I may have coursework due in Wednesday that's really pissing me off, and I really should be applying for jobs here there and everywhere, but dammit I feel stressed and, for me, writing is relaxing.
After I updated my blog I decided to go through the Blogcritics blogroll, after all, I think I've only actually seen one or two of the critics' blogs before, and then only due to links in articles/comments. So I got through the A's and already I found about 3 or 4 that haven't been active since the beginning of September (or earlier), one link that plain doesn't work and one that links to a site that says the site has in fact moved.
Why do we do it? why do people bother signing up for a blog, then actually write on it, only to give up when you might be starting to get readers? I can understand it at least for blogcritics - you are supposed to have a blog if you join, so that you can be added to the blogroll, and you are *asked* to post to it from time to time.
I dunno, maybe most people really do only start blogging because they think it'll make them famous overnight, or rich overnight, or both. To be honest, I don't write for other people, I write for me, otherwise I'd actually make an attempt to write in some easy-to-read style or something. Nevermind eh?
Article comments
1 - BB
You must have been reading my mind Jon. In fact I was going to write a post on the subject but you scooped me. It all started with this article from PC Magazine written by John C. Dvorak. In it he foresees the demise of the blogdom and says that we are all deluding ourselves and being duped by the powers that be and I would love to hear what my fellow bloggers have to say about this.
2 - Craig Lyndall
For me ultimately, my personal blog is a community tool. It is a good way for my friends to keep up with me even from long distances. Not only that, they get to argue with me as if we were sitting in the same room. It isn't so much about being famous, although I wouldn't mind being better known, but it is all a part of my friends keeping up with me and me keeping up with them.
3 - jadester
i think that's the best use. I don't quite use mine for that bcos to be honest i think it'd be, well, boring. I don't think many (if any) of my mates'd bother reading it either...lol
but i was reminded of that recent poll on blogging that showed a large proportion of blogs had been "inactive" (i.e. had no new content) over the past six months. In fact, having just started reading the article BB mentioned (thanx for pointing that out - i guess i should read more online news sites - lol) it says
QUOTE: And more than 25 percent of all new blogs are what the researchers call "one-day wonders." Meanwhile, the abandonment rate appears to be eating into well-established blogs: Over 132,000 blogs are abandoned after a year of constant updating :UNQUOTE
i don't really see that blogging could have ever been thought to have been a replacement for more "traditional" journalism. It can supplement it, and possibly in time (if it survives) become another "traditional" form of journalism.
Blogging isn't really new - it's just like a cross between an online letters page and an online (personal) journal.
Wish i could have written that before there was such a buzz about it...
4 - jadester
hah! looks like someone else agrees with me about blogs - Jim Lynch over at the pc magazine discussion on dvorak's article has posted more or less an identical view to mine over the nature of blogs and blogging. It feels good that i'm not the only one that thinks that...
5 - TDavid
There will always be some writers who refuse to see any value in blogging, or whatever the next writing "thing" (tool, technology, whatever) is for that matter.
I've never understood those (like Dvorak who normally writes great technology-related columns) who don't use the technology flavor of the day whining about those who do. Maybe Dvorak was a little light on material the day he had to write this piece?
I was watching a featurette for the Indiana Jones trilogy and the writer for Raiders of the Lost Ark was pointing out that he wrote the whole thing longhand. Apparently he wasn't into typing much, but he indicated that "these days" he uses a computer.
Technology and writers have a long, storied history together.
6 - Eric Olsen
Certainly we need to clean up the dead links here, but I'm not too concerned about people who haven't updated their sites in a while, If someone wants to go through the blogroll and tell me what links are dead, I'd greatly appreciate it.
As far as blogging in general - what the hell does anyone expect? There is high attrition in ANY new business or hobby or personal activity - why would blogs be otherwise? I am astonished that anyone would dismiss blogs in general at this point in the game: they're already part of the mainstream press, as is this site.
There is good, bad and ugly in anything, but the combination of opinion, immediacy, fact, and personality that comes through in THOUSANDS of the best blogs is irreplacable. Some people need to just fuck right off, it appears.