TheBanyanTree: blogging

[Dave]

> Blogging seems to be the new thing.  I don't see how it's so great.  I
> mean, the software looks to be fun to play with.  But unless you have a
> really cool website that gets a lot of traffic, who's gonna read what ya
> write?  I suspect my "old fart side" is showing here.
>
> I have a website.  Best I can tell from the web log stuff, I get
> about 1800 visitors a month and 1200 are search robots.  It works out to 
> about 60 visitors a day.  That sounds good but robots don't count.  But I 
> know my site sucks.  Any suggestions to un-suckify my site other than 
> deleting the darn thing would be very much appreciated.  I don't think 
> adding a blog will help, I'm not a prolific writer.

The thing with blogging just cold from a website is that it takes a lot of 
work. A person has to blog a lot and make it interesting. Syndicate the blog 
with the popular sites. And network. The main thing that makes a blog 
successful is networking with other bloggers. You mention their name, they 
mention yours, hopefully a ripple affect occurs and readers come to check 
you out. It takes far more effort than I have the time for. I know cause 
I've tried it.

On the other hand, I'm totaly addicted to Livejournal. Which is different. 
It's blogging software but it's part of a larger community. The part of the 
package that makes it so much fun is the freind's list. Or what we call our 
flist. This takes some work too, but less than just a blog out alone in the 
cold isolation of the internet proper. Luckily I have a flist with lots of 
people I know f2f. That makes it even more fun.

But the joy of the flist is how it can be traveled and connected. You check 
someone's flist from your flist. See who their friends are. Find someone 
interesting and read what they post. Then check their flist, find someone 
interesting - on and on until for some reason you can't remember you 
friended a British woman named Vicki Decay who was pole dancing at a gig one 
of your favorite bands just had last weekend.

Any RSS feed can be added to a flist also, which is extremely conveinent. I 
can read what my freinds are up to and the Onion or Slate, on the same page, 
if I chose to.

>
> Anyway.  Those of you that have blogs and don't bother posting to the
> Tree...   because it's a pain to post twice... or whatever the reason... 
> please post a little note saying you've updated your site/blog.

Guilty as charged. To me though, blog entries are different than what is 
going on in the Tree. Some entries are short snippets, a complaint, maybe a 
blog game (called memes - same as newsgroups of old). There are very few 
blog entries I make that have any story content to them. Some prose, poetry, 
or political rant.

Right now my posts are filtered so only LJ members on my flist can read 
them. Bit of a problem with a drama mama who lives close by. That will clear 
itself up though, and then I'll come back out to play. It's always a thrill 
to post something and then find a member from Espresso-Fiction has read it 
and made a comment on a public post.

Also, I don't feel like the same person who was a member of Spoon. Lots has 
changed since then. I enjoy reading posts to the Tree and seeing familiar 
names, finding out what folks are up to. It's just been hard to try to 
re-introduce myself. I'm a bit more eclectic than I once was. I don't know 
if I'd be recognised.

So for what it's worth:
http://joad77.livejournal.com/

Interesting you bringing this up Paul. Really got me thinking about stuff...

Thanks,
Dave