Thursday, June 16, 2011

My Problem With Blogger

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." - John Green, Looking For Alaska


I'm sitting here online minding my own business and discussing faerie clones with my best friend (long story), and I get an email. An email from Tumblr. Apparently a poem I wrote had been reblogged by the famous tumblr Eff Yeah Nerdfighters.


So that's exciting and all, but whatever. It's not that big of a deal. I don't even follow FYNF anymore. But then the emails keep coming. Other people do follow them, which means loads of people are reading it. 75 likes and/or reblogs in an hour.


I don't say that to brag, and I don't say that to say "Hey, look how cool I am." No, I say that because it illustrates my problem with Blogger.


A Blogspot blog is like a private residence waaaaay out in the country. No one knows you're there unless you invite them to come visit sometime. There's no "Stumble Upon"-esque system designed to help you discover new ones, or to help anyone else discover you. Maybe you'll get to the point where people say "Oh yeah, I heard there's a house over there."


Now a Tumblr blog is like a bed in a giant homeless shelter. You're there, and so is everyone else. The beds are close enough together that you don't have to move in order to talk to someone. It's incredibly easy to find new people, because you're surrounded by them on all sides.


I can write things on here that I probably wouldn't put on Tumblr, because I have the security of the lack of publicity. Any given post usually gets less than 20 views. I can say controversial things because there is a significant lack of trolls/people-who-like-to-argue-but-aren't-good-at-it-who-I-don't-want-to-deal-with.


But I read several Blogger blogs that I enjoy a lot, and think deserve more viewership than they get, and there's really no way to make that happen short of excessive self-promotion on their parts and obnoxious hawking by the rest of us.


I shouldn't have to double-blog the posts I think would be well-appreciated (like Mr. Paranormal Romance) just so they get the exposure needed to see if I'm right. Except that's exactly what I just did with said post. I don't intend to do it often, but the fact that it's something with enough benefits to consider is just sad.


The idea blogging platform would have a nice balance: not so open to the world as Tumblr, but easy to find new, good things-- like the "Related videos" sidebar on YouTube.


You know I love you, Google, but I would like to call for a Blogger reform.

6 comments:

  1. I've often considered moving my blog to Wordpress for this reason (and several others, like the lack of trackbacks and pingbacks). What's stopped me, of course, is that Wordpress wants me to pay **grumble grumble** if I plan on keeping my shiny custom domain name, whereas Blogger will let me use it for free.
    However, Tumblr looks... intriguing.

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  2. Yes, I thought of wordpress awhile back too. And like Elijah, I no wanna pay for something someone else offers for free.:) Tumblr does look interesting...

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  3. I cannot say that I have spent much time on Tumblr, but I do believe that places where everybody is running into everybody else are hard places to foster well developed thoughts, kind of like homeless shelters... Anyway, it could just be a signal to noise issue, if there is as much quality material on Tumblr, but much more linking of crazy cat photos and reposting of this one poem that, like, so totally changed my life that one time, then the good stuff can be harder to find. Meh, I like Blogger, still waters run deep and all that jazz. I kind of fell off the blog reading wagon, so I might suddenly comment on a few of your posts all at once.

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  4. Yeah, a lot of tumblr is cat photos and randomness. Pros and cons to both.

    True story:
    I refresh Google Reader. I see 6 new comments on here. My thought: "Kenny must be back. Either that or its spam bots."

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  5. It could be both, a mad philosopher/computer scientist might have written a spam bot to attempt to provide meaningful feedback. However, I doubt a spam bot would forget to subscribe to comments as often as I do. Hope you don't mind my spam!

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  6. Haha, no not at all. I like getting comments- especially when they're meaningful.

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