A Blog about Blogging has been Blogged
Posted by Weasel Terrahawk on August 14, 2008
weblog – a personal Web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of other sites that are of interest to the user, also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the user
After creating and maintaining this weblog of my own, I have noticed many things about blogging, and have also noticed what can be and can’t be considered blogging. In the past, I’ve always kept a “journal”, on a specific social networking website. I also had a “blog” on another one, which was specific to the writing about video games and the such. But recently, I decided to switch to here, my own personal space where I can truly post what I want.
The interesting thing is what kinds of entries people notice, and what kinds people don’t. In the essence of a “journal”, it was more of a life update, keeping people in the know, and possibly leading people to a story that they found interesting, or possibly even something humorous. But people were always able to keep up with them because that site had a feature that allowed you to receive an alert right to your profile when they updated. Keeping track of your friends on the site was easy, but if the site became uninteresting to someone, and they would leave, or maybe they got busy in life, one would forget, or possibly lose interest in that person’s updates.
For the “blog” that I used to keep, based on what the networking site that it was on had as a theme, which was video games, nine times out of ten everyone would keep their themes and topics on video games, which did make the most sense. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really an update system, so if a user didn’t check if anyone in their friend’s lists had a new entry, they wouldn’t even ever know one way or the other.
On both of these websites, I used to post almost every other day. Not long ago, I thought about making a collective home for all of my thoughts, and bringing all of my friends together in one place to be able to read what was going on with my life. I’ve seen others do it before, so I figured this would be an excellent and organized way of going about it. But, as one of my friends has said, “out of sight, out of mind”. I am not saying that I blame him in the least bit, but now that I have moved on to the age of RSS feeds, I find myself shying away from those other sites in favor of a much more personalized way of getting information to others.
In a personal weblog, one is able to write editorials about whatever they may want, share their opinions with people who care to read them, update their friends on what is going on in their life, even promote themselves to possible jobs and such.
Unfortunately, I have been disappointed by my weblog experience. In certain entries, I get a comment or two, depending on the type of entry. If it’s a life update, and I actually post something on my social networking sites to remind people, they’ll check it out, but on their own, I’m nothing more than another person in the world. If it’s, say, a video game update, I may get a fellow video game journalist who likes my writing make a comment complimenting my work. It all depends on the situation, but overall, there is a grave lack of caring. Which brings me to wonder if I should even blog at all. I thoroughly enjoy journalism, and sharing my thoughts with the world. But finding a method of doing that, which isn’t restricted to the confines of a specific website has become a challenge.
I conducted a small experiment the other day. I made a blog entry saying, quote, “By the way, this Blog post is a little experiment. If you read this, make a comment on it, hehe.” Take a guess on how many comments I got. If you answered with “none”, you would be correct. So my experiment proved to me that people don’t make any effort of following my work much farther than you can see them. A sad revelation, in the least, but still one that I have realized. And that’s what spawned me to make a blog entry about blogging. Funny idea, right? In conclusion, my debate of whether or not to blog or not is currently in question. While I enjoy writing and blogging to an extreme degree, the lack of people reading it defeats the purpose altogether.
And for those of you who noticed that I have a header image of Wall-E; I will be going to see a movie with my friend Justine next Saturday, followed by taking her out to dinner. She is leaving for Italy, if I remember right, the Sunday after, and will be there for many months. To date, that brings the total number of friends who have left, either temporarily or permanently, to at least FIVE. A depressing thought, no? I cherish the time I have with my friends, and losing them, even for just a few months, is a harsh time to endure.
Good night everyone.
- Weasel Terrahawk
Kemo said
Maaaaan, Long time no see/hear. Your friend going too Italy…Ive been too Italy sucks….
Hamstar said
The fact that you get a couple of comments is actually pretty good!
On RVB I have 86 watchers, I have made 542 journals and I average 10.5 replies per journal… we’ll say 11 to round up.
So of the 86 people who have actively chosen to watch me, only 11 people will care enough to comment. Of those comments I usually get “lol” or “cool” or something else short to that nature. Not a real meat & potatoes comment usually.
Remember waaaay waaaaaaaay waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when in the long before time when we talked about websites and Weasel TV? Remember what I was asking about the site?
What is your motivation?
If you’re looking for numbers, it just isn’t going to happen right off, or sometimes.. at all! Look at other blogs… look at blogs of folks who are more popular than you and I and our friends combined…
When Geoff from RVB posted about places Americans aren’t allowed to visit, he had 67 comments.
When Geoff asked if anyone had quotes from the new season he had 264 comments
When he made a post about WOW, 90 people shat out their input.
Now lets take another step back…
Statistics last updated 21 hours ago (8/16/08 4:00AM).
The Rooster Teeth community currently has 697,871 registered members, with 60,558 active recently.
Think about it. 60558 active users, and of the thousands of fanboys who watch the staff… only a handful actually take the time/effort to say anything. (I think Burnie once told me he had over 5000 viewers)
If quantity of comments is your goal, you’re setting an unrealistic one.
Removing yourself from the scene all together hurts an admittedly small few, but it’s the few who do actively watch you… who do actually care about your day to day even if we don’t have much to say on it.
Take your own viewing habits into consideration.
I know you watch me… but how many of my journals do you actively comment on?
See what I mean? Doesn’t mean you don’t care about what’s going on in my life (I hope)… but maybe you just don’t have anything to add to the proceedings.
At RVBMN you carried on conversation about subjects from journals you didnt post on/about. I know you read them (or at least some of them), and that’s awesome!
Be yourself dude. Take enjoyment from your journals. I know I usually enjoy reading them. Save for ones like your recent where you threaten to quit. To be honest, this is my last stand rebuttal on the subject. I hope you stay.