Three weeks from tomorrow, if it and I both survive that far, this blog will observe its second Blogiversary.
Entirely by coincidence, the Chicago Tribune ran a feature this week on blogging, an email interview of Derek Gordon, vice president for marketing of Technorati by Tribune reporter Patrick T. Reardon.
The transcribed interview is entitled "Welcome to obscurity: Blogs and the real world," which pretty much sums up the interview's theme.
According to the interview, Technorati is tracking 109.2 million blogs at this point (up from 94 million just this past August) -- but, according to Gordon, "just over 99 percent" of these blogs get no hits in the course of a year. "The vast majority of blogs," Gordon says, "exist in a state of total or near-total obscurity."
Makes you feel pretty good about spending so much time in the Blogosphere, doesn't it? And, to pile on, Gordon adds that 3-7,000 new "splogs" -- spam blogs -- are created every single day. These, Gordon says, "are mostly link farms with various nefarious ends designed to both game ranking systems and to get unsuspecting folks to click into sites that have dubious/illegal monetization schemes."
At least this blog has climbed out of the state of total and near-total obscurity... and into a state of semi-total obscurity.
Moreover, on many days at least, Second Effort is doing better than Rudy Giuliani's campaign blog. This sounds pretty impressive... until you look at yesterday's High 5 column by the Tribune's Steve Johnson. Johnson wrote that, "Nobody seems to be reading Rudy Giuliani's official campaign blog, says Slate, citing the blog's own statistics counting fewer than 40 views per day of a key feature. Yet he's still the Republican front-runner, which proves something about Republicans, political blogs, front-runners months before the primaries or all three."
I enjoy writing this blog. I've enjoyed it even more since actual people began reading it.
However, this blog has no clear focus: Miscellany doesn't count as a theme. Maybe this blog could advance from semi-total obscurity to merely partial obscurity if it had a theme.
The making of a giant rubberband ball is probably too narrow.... "My life and varied interests" is apparently too broad. So I guess I'm open for suggestions?
8 comments:
Hello, Cur, I am pleased to be able to be first to comment on your anniversary post because I think it was about this time last year that I first started reading.
If as you say you enjoy writing it and having real people read it, then why worry that you do not have a readership (or "look-at ship" more realistically because that is all that meters can really appraise, isn't it?)
Happy anniversary. I am in your toddling town just now. So since, I too, opt for miscellany as subject matter, I may be overlapping your content with local commentary--without the sports bits, of course.
Your blog is fun to read. You have fun writing it. Isn't that enough to keep you motivated to continue?
It seems most non-political blogs that I have read don't have a theme.
I know I don't ~ I write it for fun, as an outlet, and so I have a response when someone asks me if I have a hobby!
woops ~ almost forgot. I tagged you with an incredibly easy meme, Curmy.
The '5 Things' one
How many of us don't labor under the invisible title of miscellaneous? Gives us license then to branch out wherever and whenever the road of life takes a little extra loop or turn that way. You write a great blog, excellent opinion and commentary -intelligent, sometimes somewhat academic and frequently very humorous in a really cool, laid back way -all in all -quite enjoyable! Keep it the way it is -please?
Anniversaries are great milestones.
A second Blogiversary coming up. Nice.
I simply ask this: Why can't miscellany be a theme?
and then I comment this: If it ain't broke then don't fix it. On the other hand, if you aren't happy with your product by all means tweak it but not on our account.
My blog gets more hits per day than Rudy's?
(If I could, I'd insert Nelson's "ha-ha!" from The Simpsons here).
It just doesn't seem right.
isn't curmudgeon a category?
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