May 27, 2004
YES, BUT THE NEIGHBORS ARE HAPPY YOU PUT AWAY THE BULLHORN:
For Some, the Blogging Never Stops (KATIE HAFNER, 5/27/04, NY Times)
TO celebrate four years of marriage, Richard Wiggins and his wife, Judy Matthews, recently spent a week in Key West, Fla. Early on the morning of their anniversary, Ms. Matthews heard her husband get up and go into the bathroom. He stayed there for a long time."I didn't hear any water running, so I wondered what was going on," Ms. Matthews said. When she knocked on the door, she found him seated with his laptop balanced on his knees, typing into his Web log, a collection of observations about the technical world, over a wireless link.
Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession. Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily and feel anxious if they don't keep up. As they spend more time hunkered over their computers, they neglect family, friends and jobs. They blog at home, at work and on the road. They blog openly or sometimes, like Mr. Wiggins, quietly so as not to call attention to their habit. [...]
The number of bloggers has grown quickly, thanks to sites like blogger.com, which makes it easy to set up a blog. Technorati, a blog-tracking service, has counted some 2.5 million blogs.
Of course, most of those millions are abandoned or, at best, maintained infrequently. For many bloggers, the novelty soon wears off and their persistence fades.
Sometimes, too, the realization that no one is reading sets in. A few blogs have thousands of readers, but never have so many people written so much to be read by so few. By Jupiter Research's estimate, only 4 percent of online users read blogs.
Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves.
Rule #6: Never let it interfere with real life.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 27, 2004 10:19 AM
D'oh
Posted by: David Cohen at May 27, 2004 10:55 AMRule #5: Have no more than 5 rules.
Posted by: pj at May 27, 2004 11:01 AMpj:
When I worked on the gubernatorial campaign the candidate talked about a management guru who said never more than 6. Of course, God got 10, but I guess He's entitled.
Posted by: oj at May 27, 2004 11:09 AMOJ:
Considering how well the 10 were followed, the later move to abbreviate it to 2 seems astute...
Posted by: mike earl at May 27, 2004 11:34 AM'Wired' magazine estimates the blog readership to be 14 million strong, although, of course, the vast majority of blogs have sparse traffic.
As to the "few" who contrive to wring a livelihood from blogging, it seems to be a very few who manage it, almost all from paid staff positions at "synergy" branded blogs.
It's far easier to make a living from eBay auctions than from blogging, and the former's deucedly hard.
BTW, one tip 'Wired' offers for bloggers is that frequent posts build community and readership by rewarding people with new content when they return; I'd say that BrosJudd has that technique down pat.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 27, 2004 12:17 PMI keep meaning to look into syndication-format readers so I don't have to keep reloading websites, but haven't had the time. I suspect I'm being penny-wise with my time there.
Posted by: mike earl at May 27, 2004 1:08 PMAt one point, the article concludes:
"Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves."Oh sure, that never happens at The Times.
More thoughts here.
Posted by: Ed Driscoll at May 27, 2004 2:32 PMMike,
Bloglines is a pretty good and free on-line aggregator.
Posted by: The Other Brother at May 27, 2004 4:00 PMConsidering the other things Mr. Wiggins could have been doing in the bathroom alone she was probably happy he was just on the computer.
Posted by: AWW at May 27, 2004 4:04 PMAWW: You bet!
I can't count the number of times my wife got out of bed at 2AM and came into my office and told me to shut off the computer and come to bed. The first few times, she tiptoed in silently, just to see if I was porn surfing. After she realized I was just reading blogs, she now is very noise.
ray:
Why not do what I do and get up ridiculously early instead? For some strange reason, people who imagine you getting up to all kinds of unsavoury mischief at 2 am can't conceive of your doing anything wrong at 5 am.
Orrin's right about not letting it interfere with real life, though. I found after a while that blogging was interfering seriously with my excessive alcohol consumption. Had to make some adjustments.
Posted by: Peter B at May 28, 2004 6:10 AM"When I worked on the gubernatorial campaign the candidate talked about a management guru who said never more than 6."
I know about this "management guru". He is more of a communication guru, and he teaches a course called "Thinking on your Feet" for our company and others in Vermont, Minnesota and Canada, among other places. I took his course in March, it was excellent. He spoke about an unnamed candidate in Vermont who he helped trim down his plan from something like 20 initiatives to 6. I didn't realize it was the gubernatorial campaign.
Small world.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at May 28, 2004 12:40 PM