1551 The blog roll
Paula cut me loose; Mr. Cloud says I'm hanging by a thread because of my politics. Twyla gave up blogging. Lori doesn't have a blog roll. Other bloggers who linked to me have just disappeared, with no explanation. Moved on, gone on vacation, on hiatis, died, divorced, whatever.I'm coming up on the second anniversary of blogging--October 2003 I started. If I'd been smart or if I'd wanted fab stats, I would have never admitted to being a retired librarian, and I would have used my daughter's photo (she's gorgeous). I would have used lots of sexually loaded language, like certain popular sites, and found a niche like knitting dog hair, or buying shoes. The internet may be the new communication/information medium, but no one wants to hang out with senior citizens. Not even other seniors. I've taught about 10 over-55 year olds how to blog, and none have kept up. They posted about 2 or 3 then went back to golf, or publishing books, or drinking coffee. Even my best friend won't read blogs, and my sister and brother rarely check in. Murray, who has an opinion on everything and is a good writer, seems to have lost his password; Eric is quiet, thoughtful and philosphical, but must have writer's block.
The number of Americans who say they read blogs jumped 58% in 2004, to 32,000,000 people, according to Pew. And there are supposed to be 18,000,000 blogs, which means I should get at least 2 regulars. Those who follow the trends say "pungent entries" bring people back. "Pungent" means being sharp, incisive, and to the point--even irritating, from the Latin words meaning fist or fight. Hmmm. Paula and Mr. Cloud find me irritating, but it doesn't seem to work with them.
Update: Just checked on Eric. He's got his third entry. Oh, praise the Lord!
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6 comments:
Even my best friend won't read blogs, and my sister and brother rarely check in.
This is a curious phenomenon that we also experience. Basically, family and friends, even email friends, won't or don't read our blogs. It's hard to understand; it simply is.
BTW, I often check via RSS feeds, so I may not always show up in your stats.
I read via Bloglines, but it's frustrating reading your blog that way because I get only the barest of summaries and have to come to the blog to read the full entries and frankly, with nearly 300 blogs on my blogroll (not all the subs are public), I rarely have time to do that.
I'm in my 50s, not yet retired, and pretty much a liberal who doesn't want to get into debates, so I ignore a lot of political blogging, as well as a few other subjects/themes that don't interest me. Because my interests are quite varied and often skew a bit younger than I am, I read a lot of blogs from people in their 30s and 40s. Things like TV and science fiction and shoes. Can't blog enough about shoes. :)
I told friends about my blogs, some read them. I never told my family. Well, my father, but he's not online. Some of my friends have LiveJournals, as do I. It's a real community there.
Shelly, you have so many blogs I don't know how you keep track of your own, let alone anyone else's.
My blogs are themed. I suppose if Blogger had categories or tags, I wouldn't have as many, tho I do like playing with the templates. So they're not difficult to keep track of. I'm a rather organized person.
As for reading, Bloglines takes care of that for me. I just skim through by category and read what catches my interest at that moment. :)
I started reading your blog BECAUSE you were a librarian. I continue reading it because you post on so many subjects. I'm sure your daughter is very beautiful, but I appreciate you being yourself.
Congratulations for blogging almost 2 years! I hope you continue for many more years!
I hate when that happens. But you probably had to give them your e-mail address when you registered, so just write and ask, and they'll send it to you. They won't let just anyone post at your website, you know. Someone might try to pretend to be murrayt. However, since you have to be registered to comment here, it's probably the same.
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