27 Nov 2006

A Togs thoughts on Blogs & Blogging




As a result of complaints from some of my readers, reluctantly this is going to be a serious Blog, there is a possibility that it will be reflective, that I will cogitate and give readers food for thought on the topic of Blog's.

When I was doing my research into Blog's I spent a lot of time looking at a whole range of other people's Blog's from the very serious through to the very humorous and lastly to the absolutely appalling which I hope my Blog isn't.

I was fascinated at the range of topics that are covered by people in their various Blog's, from one of my favourites the 43 bus to some that were so terrible I would not want to mention them and give them publicity they were that bad.

Friends suggested looking at Myspace and YouTube which I did and found that at YouTube a man in his 70s was one of the top Blog's although the average membership is around the 18 to 25 age group on the site. Further the video of his I saw was of him reminiscing about the First World War. I have a feeling that this will cause confusion to people such as psychologists and PR companies when they are trying to decide what people are really interested in with regard to Blogs.

Another thing that I wanted to look at was how could I improve the chances of other people reading my Blog, also what sort of topics would appeal to the sort of people who search for Blog's on the Internet. Sadly I have not found the answer as can be seen by me when I look at Sitemeter and the number of visitors and where they originate from ( I do wish I could find out who gren with envy, scarlett angel & annonomous are) to find out what drew them to my blog

This weekend in the Sunday Times there was an an article about Internet nuns who have their own Blog's, which will obviously of attracted a whole range of people for different reasons to read the material.

In my own Blog I mentioned a visit to see Ken Dodd which attracted readers sufficiently to make comments on my Blog quite quickly after I had posted the Blog, which show there are people out there constantly looking for information or knowledge about their particular interests and hobbies, often into the early hours of the morning.

Having said that in one of my Blog's I could not sleep one morning so got up at 5am and read the Sunday paper supplement and found an interesting article that then provoked me to then enter a new post on my Blog, interestingly enough nobody in my circle of friends and readers has passed any comment on the subject which I thought was unusual and was worth comment on the topic.

I'm not sure quite why I or any other person would want to sit at a computer for hours on end either typing, or in this particular instance, using speech recognition creating a Blog or posting, that possibly other people may never ever choose to read. Is it because it is a way to convey our thoughts, feelings and experiences to the outside world in a way which we would never ever do in public, because our friends often are not interested in our day-to-day life and interests, or we are reluctant to let people know of these same interests fears & feelings.

Hopefully therefore putting out our Blog for the millions of Blog readers to read, approve and helpfully comment positively as well as possibly giving some of us a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment when this occurs.

What is even stranger is the fact that there are people out there such as me who spend time reading and commenting on other people's Blog's, when there must be lots of other things that we could do to occupy our time. I suppose I can understand people who have shared interests searching for others and their Blog's to increase their knowledge on a particular subject and share with others. It is even understandable that some people use Blog's to convey their thoughts and feelings about the highs and lows of their lives in an anonymous manner to strangers.

What I personally struggled to understand are the people who have not made the effort to write in normal English that people such as I cannot understand or read without great difficulty. Maybe this is as a result of the growth in people using texting as a means of communication, that excludes a proportion of us Bloggers, but may be that is what the intention is.

In my own Blog more people have passed comment in personal conversation and by e-mail on the quality of my photos, than they have on the content of the rest of my posts despite the fact that I spend a lot of time thinking of content for the Blog's and then typing the piece into the Blog.

The question therefore is why on earth bother either reading or writing Blog's, unfortunately art present, I do not have the answer, to make it worse as my readers are aware, I have now with little success created another Blog on MySspace to widen the readership of my blogs, which so far nobody appears to be able to gain access to.

If this is typical of people entering into the world of Blogging and the difficulties they encounter when trying to make a statement or share an interest, is it really worth the effort and what lengths are we prepared to go in the hope of gaining an audience, which I feel maybe is why many such as myself do it.

But even this is a contradiction because I have chosen to use another name so only those who I have informed of the blog actually can identify me, so even if I gained a larger redership, I could meet readers of the blog on the street or elsewhere and none of us would know the other, so is this fame.

I remember a friend many years ago commenting on the fact that I enjoy being behind the scene as in theatre controlling the event, rather than as an actor who people can actually identify, she said there is a name for people such as me and possibly other bloggers, which is "eminence gris" that means "grey eminnce" which fits in with my personality.

Thanks for reading this Blog, I would be interested to hear any of your comments about the content, I do realise for 1 of my readers there is missing punctuation but unfortunately my throat is getting dry and it is now 10:30 PM so you readers will have to put up with the Blog as it is

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