Confusion about diffussion

The more I prowl the more surprised I am at how little considered this fact is: a mass of links is worthless.

Webrings, Blogrolls, the whole spectrum. What is the point? Incoming links for boosting pagerank? A link on an unranked page adds almost nothing to begin with. Distribute that almost nothing over their ten, or hundred, or thousand outgoing links and it's worth really close to nothing. But it isn't all about pagerank. It's all about readers. If I had a list of a hundered links over there in the sidebar, and I added yours to it would you want it at the bottom, the top, or in the middle? Do you think it would make any difference? Readers see 'the list'. Will they recognize the list changed? Have they tried everything on the list already, so a new thing has to be checked to keep up? I think not. The new link has just as much chance as any other of being picked at random by the very occassional person who exits that way. A slim chance that the very occassional reader will follow your link. Oh boy!

I think I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really want someone to tell me...what is the point?

The Secret Power of Comments

But not too secret I hope. Comments are the lifeblood of many bloggers, myself included. I know it is hard to write, so when someone leaves a comment it means a lot to me. My blogs are all set up to forward comments automatically to my e-mail, which sorts them into a comment folder. I read the new ones every day. On days when i don't feel like writing I go to that folder and look back on them. Knowing that people make the effort to write something back, even occassionally, has never failed to get me writing.

So on a 'mission' for my Blogshares game today I came across this blog. I think there is an elegance in the poetry there. If this blog gets healthy it will head up the 'poetry' section of my soon to be created link list. You may be saying 'what? gets healthy? what does that mean?'. This blog is a beautiful creature in failing health. The writer hasn't posted in a month, after being fairly regular for a long time. No comments. No evidence of readers. Not much to keep the spirit from flagging. I hope the writer will start visiting here and ask questions about how to market her blog to readers, and we can have her poetry displayed on a robust, healthy blog.

Go there. Comment on what you like.

To pick a topic

Like many bloggers I have started blogs that floundered and died. They were creatures of the blogosphere that were doomed to short pointless lives, and got quickly recycled into the vast servers of the internet. No readers mourned their loss. They didn't live long enough to have any. I didn't mourn their loss, but I did wonder if I was cut out to be a blogger. I now successfully shepherd five specimens of domesticus bloggius, so I guess I am cut out to be a blogger. What changed?

What changed is my discovery of the topical blog. Notice I said discovery, not invention. My blogs have specific purposes, and they don't cross. Arvil Bren's Journal has never been marketed to other bloggers. It has over a hundred readers every day, most of which think that 'blogger' is a strange word made up by whatever domain managers carry AB's Journal. Those readers don't write blogs. They don't read blogs. They don't know what they are. AB's Journal is a story, period. Serial fiction that they read over lunch, or breakfast, or when their boss isn't looking, usually two or three entries at a time. If I miss a day they e-mail me to ask what happened.

But I want to talk about ...well, stuff. That is probably screaming through the mind of the typical blogger right about now. It certainly screamed through mine. When it screamed into my head that I wanted to talk about...stuff...I didn't challenge Arvil Bren's faithful followers to plod through what I had to say...I started another blog. One of the beauties of the blogosphere is that there are a multitude of providers who let anyone start a blog of any kind at any time.

As an example of the 'almost' topical blog, click here to visit Tildemark Blogs. This is a good blog that a blogger would like. Bloggers generally (being bloggers) enjoy reading blogs. The eclectic mix gives us that sense of adventure. Not knowing what today's entry is going to be about is part of that. A regular visitor to Tildemark gets that charge, because it might be a film review, but it could be a really useful bit of info about web services...or most anything else. Bloggers operate in that world of wonder at the unknown, but how do you recommend the site to your non-blogger friends? "Oh, you liked that review in the Times? You should check out Tildemark. They do reviews there. Well, most days." Then your friend checks it out and the top item has nothing to do with film. That just doesn't really work. In my opinion Tildemark would be well served to have a film review blog, where readers (not bloggers) could count on film reviews, and a second blog for the eclectic spouting that is blogging.

When I wanted to have a base of operations for my Blogshares game I started another blog...this one. So the examples you find linked to here are not chosen at random. They aren't chosen because they are bad, or good, they are chosen to illustrate my points; chosen from blogs that will also give me an advantage in the game. I will be building a link list here. Well, actually over there. ---> It will be in sections. For example, I can foresee having a film review section. Many blogs have a link list that amounts to here's a whole bunch of blogs any one of which could be about anything today. To bloggers that's a little random sample shot in the dark, but what does it offer to readers?

Hot topic in the Blogosphere

I had my say about links from other blogs. I want to give equal time to other opinions and positions so I'll be putting a few links here.

Blogroll or not? from Mindspill

Herdbeasts Of The Blog Savannas

One of the ever-present questions for most blog writers is the question of traffic. What they are really interested in is knowing that the words they are crafting are being mulled over by some readers. Maybe not mulled over, but at least looked at, more preferably by a lot of readers. In the practical world of the internet there are advertisers who will pay to have their name, product, or service put in front of those readers if there are a lot of them. So how to get readers is a vital issue, and like most vital issues it has generated a lot of false answers.

One of the great misunderstandings of blogging and the internet revolves around this truth: to be read, you must be found. In the wide world of the internet this has generated a value system based on incoming links. Since it takes a link to get from wherever the reader is to the site you want them at this seems to make sense. The most powerful reflection of this value system is the Google Pagerank. But does it really work that way in the Blogosphere?

I started playing a game called Blogshares. One of the useful bits of information I got from playing is a listing of all the incoming links my blogs have among other blogs in the game. There were incoming links that I had never seen on my traffic monitors. I looked at the sites these links came from and could see why. A list of links down the sidebar headed 'Other Blogs' is not going to generate traffic going anywhere. I appreciate the effort, and it's great for my blog's value in the Blogshares game. It even has some small effect on my pagerank with Google and the other search engines. It isn't going to generate traffic, much less readers.

Blogshares is just one of many social structures among blogs that comes from this valuing of incoming links. There are 'marriages', characterized by 'you link me and I'll link you' relationships. Far more commonly there are 'clans', groups of blogs where they all have links to each other. Then there are the widely promiscuous blogrollers, whose link value is minimal. Not only do they generate no traffic, but their impact on pagerank is diluted to near zero by their large numbers of outgoing links. Great for a quick laugh though; nothing like seeing 'blogs I read' at the head of a list of a hundred or so links.

So my answer is; no, incoming links do not really reflect the blogs ability to draw readers. Particularly if the incoming links are predominantly from other blogs. So what's a blogger to do? First thing is to not give up on the existing social structures, even if they do not do the great good we all wish they did. Even if their worth is vastly overestimated, they do have worth. As any creature grazing the plains of the biosphere can attest, there is strength in numbers. The same holds true in the blogosphere.

Why I need another blog

I have blogs. I have more blogs than one would think that I need. The average person would think I don't need any blogs at all. But here I am.

My blogs all have specific purposes. I have Arvil Bren's Journal, which is my serial fiction. Since new readers might not be familiar with blog structures I have a manually constructed archive in another blog called Arvil's Dusty Tomes to make it easy for them to read from the start. I have I Write His, How About Mine, which is my own journal of a sort and keeps my friends, relatives and acquaintances up to date on my still being alive and thinking. They know my politics and generally don't want to hear any more so I have A Political Question for those times when some political issue just demands to be addressed. It seemed I have a blog for everything. But no!

Blogology is the study of these strange creatures called blogs. Blogs inhabit what has come to be known as the blogosphere. They have vastly different species, societies, and habits...as you can see from just the blogs I personally maintain. In Blogology I intend to analyze the blogosphere. I expect this will improve the health and welfare of my own blogs, and perhaps assist some friends with theirs.

My promise to those who read here is that I will personally write something once per week, and that I will endeavor to have experts in the budding field of blogology contribute as well.