ego-scoring..bloggers worry too much

I'm not sure how this comment will be received (i've received a bit of hate-email lately for some of my other remarks...thanks guys, love you too!), but something which sprung to mind after reading Rob Farley's post about "who reads your blog", i felt i had to comment. Of course, it might not be appreciated, but really, who honestly cares? Should quickly add that it's not Rob that's worried about who reads his blog, but a friend of his.

The tone is set, on center stage, for a bit of a rant...but first i should probably explain why my point of view is at it is..Blogging to me is about two things 1) reaching a community with usable information and 2) a private place to ponder your thoughts..of course, those two are quite naturally contradictive - but that's what tagging is for..those comments that are personal, tag them "Personal", "Rants", "Whinging"..whatever catches your fancy, and those posts which has a specific target audience you tag appropriately. So, here's the gist of my opinion - who cares how many people reads your blog, it's not really information that's relevant to point #2 but for those with a specific target audience in mind (like the Microsoft bloggers, Development Evangelists etc) it is of course rather important that they have at least a bit of an idea about how many and who reads it.

Since it's a mix for me i don't honestly care who reads my blog - i enjoy blogging for the simple pleasure of it (see point #2). Rob mentions in his post that encouraging comments is a way to see who reads your blog - and i agree..Frank Arrigo mentions in his post that it's the quality of the reader that's important, not the quantity...absolutely. I'd rather reach 1 genuinely interested person than 100 skimmers.

As to using FeedBurner...well....i signed up with FeedBurner and have had exactly 1 subscriber over a period of 1 month and 14 hits...so the use of FeedBurner, for such a small, and rather unimportant blog as mine is, really doesn't even justify the time i used to register my blog there. Rather, having said that, i'm hoping that the 1 subscriber i have from there is genuinely interested.

Other than that - worrying about who and how many reads your blog is like doing ego searching on google.

btw, this is James Green - the bloke definitely has a sense of humour...now i'm gunning for the DL envelope here, so hands off guys!!

Published Thu, Jan 4 2007 10:08 by Brian Madsen
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Comments

# re: ego-scoring..bloggers worry too much

Wednesday, January 03, 2007 8:37 PM by Rob Farley

:) It's actually not something I worry about much - but I do wonder about whether a little community starts to exist around some blogs. Quite a few people seem to ask questions in their blogs which they want answered in the comments. That's a different kind of blog I think. I don't really trust feedburner stats, because I think many people would read my blog through other forums anyway.

But I don't get a sense of self-worth from the numbers of people who read my blog (and after all, it's not that high a number).

# re: ego-scoring..bloggers worry too much

Wednesday, January 03, 2007 9:14 PM by Brian Madsen

Rob, but your sense of self is also justified in your youth and vigor!!

he hehehe...

# re: ego-scoring..bloggers worry too much

Thursday, January 04, 2007 9:00 PM by James Green

Well said Brian & thanks for getting the joke :-)

(dunno if I should admit this or not ... ) sometimes, If I stumble upon one of those little factoids of knowledge, or (gasp) learn something - I blog it.  

Just the act of writing a post can help me remember things.  So yes, I may well keep putting the kettle back in the fridge and leaving the milk out... but i'll be damned if I will forget the  /v* flag for msiexec

But seriously, i'm interested by this kind of duality in blogging - in one way they are the instant conversation, but I never forget that with every post we are just adding another line to someone elses google results for some time in the future.

(cr@p!  now I have to blog *this* :-)