On the Nature of Blog, Part 1 Reloaded

"Reloaded" has become the new "continued" ;)

So far, this is not an interactive experience - posting currently feels like talking to myself – but having seen Chantel’s Blog, I know that hers is very different – so this may just be early days. I think I might like it better if I could view page-view statistics on my posts, like I can on my profile. I’m not actually that bothered who looks at my profile, but I think it would be good feedback to know if anyone at all is actually reading my posts, or if I am just keeping a diary for myself.

The context of a hobby or craft or interest is different. On Chantel’s Blog, she talks of her ideas, posts photos, gets feedback, etc. That is very healthy and very interactive – very different from the essentially isolated stuff that you are now reading – again – may just be early days.

Another thought I had was about newspaper editorial columns. I think this might be quite a good point of comparison for what are essentially “personal” or non-specific-interest Blogs. But the point is that for an editorial column in a newspaper to be read, demanded, liked, wanted – it has to be GOOD – it has to be INTERESTING to a number of people. With Blog, there is no quality control! :)

One could argue that the crap I might write is of no interest to anyone else (doesn’t pass the “so what?” test), and to 99,9% of readers, that may well be the case. But then you come back to the population of the Internet and how many people 0.1% of the population is. You never know – it might be more than the circulation of a small local newspaper! If that is true – if I were to start writing about the price of property in my native Hitchin, it might be that 10-20 might actually find that interesting. And 187 million people wouldn’t!! In that context, it is like talking about LOCAL issues in a GLOBAL newspaper! In theory at least – ceramic art, or azaleas – are globally interesting – Hitchin property prices aren’t! I don’t know – go figure!