by syaffolee
More Blog Stuff
Speaking of the Technorati Top 100… John Scalzi points out that very few of the popular blogs, according to Technorati, are personal blogs. The blog world, he says, is becoming ever more corporate and political and he laments the apparent imminent demise of personal blogs. Well, Technorati is not a very good resource to go to when trying to find blogs that people are actually reading. All it tracks are links. I suspect that there are probably more people reading personal blogs than political blogs but the readership is split between thousands of personal blogs rather than just a handful of political blogs.
Blogmatcher, Blogmatcher. Neil Kramer fixes up bloggers with other bloggers they’ve never read before in a yenta-like fashion. I am somewhat skeptical with all the glowing endorsements in the comments. I figure people are more excited about getting matched in the first place than in any new blogs they are being introduced to.
The strong, silent types. A commenter over at Dustbury says he will stop visiting his site if it starts getting a lot of comments. Stop visiting a site when it becomes popular? Hm. I’d say it depends. If the blogger’s style changes with the increase in visitors, I’d say yes, I’d probably stop reading too. Otherwise, I can’t really see myself being influenced by what other people choose to read. I personally do not comment very often on other people’s blogs because I do not feel like the blogger will pay any attention to what I have to say. (Well, most of my visitors never pay any attention to what I write in here–zero seconds spent on one page view, anyone?–but it’s a different matter when I’m just scribbling on my own web space.)
Don't Shake the Flask 
While my blog matching was done tongue-in-cheek, I actually did put some thought into the “matches.” With so many blogs out there, deciding what to read is pretty much a random act. I also notice that 90% of the personal bloggers have the same popular blogs on their blogroll, as if those are the only blogs worthy of reading. This makes it difficult for some less popular blogs to get readers. I tried to find matches that would never cross paths unless I connected them. Let’s see it it works, or if it fails — like most matchmaking does…
I don’t think that people actually read blogs on their blogrolls–I think it’s more of a prestige thing, trying to get the other blogger’s attention so they can drive more traffic to their site.I’d be interested to see if your matchmaking actually works, too.This reminds me of a blog meme (now defunct) in 2002 called Blogger Insider. People signed up for it and were paired randomly. Each were to interview each other and post the interviews on their sites. This, of course, forced people to actually read a new blog and not just supply a link. I found a lot of my long time reads that way. Unfortunately, there are always people who don’t do the required work even if they say they will so all that blog interviewing pretty much stopped.
I’m weird, I suppose; people on my blogroll are there because I read them. (In fact, it’s easier for me to maintain the blogroll than it is to juggle a bunch of bookmarks.) Some get read more than others, but all get read.I’ll try Kramer’s shiddach application, though, just because it’s always a joy to find a new blog to add. (Come to think of it, I really need to add Neil’s.)
> zero seconds spent on one page view, anyone?I’m guessing this is some cookies-and-javascript thing, in which case it’s probably too dumb to fail gracefully when readers have those disabled.
In the case of Site Meter (others may vary), I understand that this is because the code loads only when the page does, and if no other page on the site is loaded, there’s no frame of reference to determine the actual time spent, so the machine inserts 0 by default.