Ampers & Dot

First off- @J - great idea about the “Recent Comments”. I actually already set it up last week, but never activated it because it seemed to clutter my sidebar. But I finally fixed my sidebar code to keep all the fonts and bullets the same size (and now &. looking), so I thought it would be nice to through them in there. Looks good (Also, please notice the retooled comment bar between posts, which highlights the comments a little more too, encouraging you to add something), I think and it makes it seem like there’s a good community here.

Which brings me to my actual topic today: Building communication through blogs. Because as much as I like the idea of people just reading my ideas on things, I’m enjoying this blog because people are writing back. Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine (great blog!) recently had an amazing anecdote which explains his theory behind blogs

“When I was in London, I sat with folks from the BBC in an afternoon devoted to blogging, and the woman next to me was troubled, bearing weight on her shoulders from having to fill her blog and manage her blog. To her, the blog was a thing, a beast that needed to be fed, a never-ending sheet of blank paper. I turned to her and said she should see past the blog. It’s not a show with a rundown that, without feeding, turns into dead air. Indeed, if you look at it that way, you’ll probably write crappy blog posts. I’ve said before that if I think I need to write a post just because I haven’t written one, I inevitably come out with something forced and bad. Instead, I blog when I find something interesting that I’ve seen and I think, ‘I have to tell my friends about that.’ You’re the friends. So yes, I said, it’s just a conversation. And reading — hearing what others are saying — is every bit as important as writing. It was as if scales were lifted from her eyes and weight from her back: She’s just talking with people.”

I thought that was just awesome advice. I’ve always spoken out against “posting for the sake of posting”. If you are thinking about posting on your blog simply because you haven’t recently, then something has gone wrong. Furthermore, if you are sitting at your computer trying to think of something to write about then you’ve really gone down the wrong path. The way I see this blog is that throughout my day I’m learning some really cool things about social media, technology, gadgets (although that’s more on my own time…), and other general nerdery. I think these things are fun and I want to pass along what I’ve learned.

But the catch 22 in the BuzzMachine quote is that to really have an online conversation through your blog, you need a community. But the best way to build a community is through writing great posts on your blog… (this is, by the way, the problem I help solve for a living). The difficulty in starting a blog is there there is no real community behind it yet. Without a real community there will be no comments and a blog without comments is basically a newsletter.

So I definitely need to take this time to thank my valiant readers, but even more so- thanks to my commenters. You’ve brought up some good points and it’s made me want to keep writing. Like J said in a comment earlier “Wow. You are seriously pushing the boundaries of being a Web 1.99 site. If you start implementing user-suggested ideas . . . you may have to bump your version number.”

Well it’s time to start pushing the boundaries more. Which reminds me - Drew, expect an entire post dedicated to your Jason Kelly link and a post about the WinMo add-ons you finally set up- that’ll be fun too.

I’ll make this a little more web 1.999ish and address J’s other comments from today: I’ve already addressed the new “recent comments” section, but as for timestamps on posts- won’t happen. I worked way too hard to take them out of my template to put them back in. My original thought was that I don’t want people knowing that I post late at night, like a nerd or something, but I also just don’t like the way it looks (AND- you’re spot on: it takes away the pressure of posting more often…)

So keep those comments coming and if you’re just lurking- well that’s ok, but at least give me a shout out hello or something. To encourage more comments I’m going to try to remember to end each post with a question from now on- this way, if no one responds, then I’ll just have to ask more interesting questions, or write more interesting posts… starting off, I’ll try to keep the questions related to the day’s post.

Today’s question:

Are you now or have you ever been an active commenter (more than once or twice) on any other blogs? If so, which ones? If not, why? And why yes for this one? What about online forums?

PS- From now on I’ll also try to make the questions less Job-Interview sounding.