Not All Who Wander Are Lost

After losing interest in everything from blogshares to orkut to the now-defunct peer-post-rating community blorgy -- but not without wasting hundreds of hours on them first -- I wasn't going to get involved in any more crackpot schemes to drive traffic in and out and thereby serve the gods of the Internet in their drive to subsume every last inch of life as we know it.

But then Anne recommended Blogexplosion, and I found two smart likeminded people in my first ten minutes surfing -- with-it school librarian WannabeMuse and media-savvy "sociopolitcal commentary" producer Selected Pete . And now I'm totally, horribly hooked.

Damn you, ADHD. Damn you, Anne. Damn you, intelligent people who rise above the infoglut chaff to prove the value of this megatimewaster day in and day out. Damn you, Internet.

Curses, foiled again.

Comments:

Browsing the heavily-addictive Blogexplosion; noticing that some users already seem a mite suspicious about whether folks coming to sites via this nifty metabrowsing-for-credit are actually staying around to read...or mostly just waiting out the timer in order to get the recipro-hits.

While I certainly can't speak for others, I find myself sticking around for at least a full index-page skim at about 1/3 of the sites I visit (and that's, what, 12 good reads tonight out of just under 40 or so?). And I've commented on three of 'em. Wonder how that stacks up to a community average? Would be nice to see the research, anyway. (Hey, maybe I've finally found my thesis topic -- call the Buffalo U School of Informatics!)

What bothers me is that, like many traffic-community tools, BE seems likely to get "worse" as the masses out there find their way in. When the average high school level blogger -- of which there are many more than the bright stars I'm currently finding as the norm on BE -- find their way to tools like BE, what's to keep the average quality up...and therefore the reason to use to the tool up as well?

Is the underlying assumption-set here too technocratic of me? Some might say so. But I think the anecdotes exist to prove otherwise. It was this that killed weblogs.com, I think -- we all ping, but don't get many hits, right?

# posted by

boyhowdy : 12:13 AM, October 31, 2004

Keep it up. I enjoy your nice blog. check out my in home small business
site. It pretty much covers in home small business
related stuff.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:24 AM, October 05, 2005

I was just searching for a product, service or web page to review for my site SEO Traffic Rank, I'm constantly trying to find related info for 100 computerbrat.com seo seo tool tool top. Any way I liked your page!

# posted by

QcynqSWG : 3:36 AM, October 07, 2005