rivercrow

I’ve been reading about blogs for the last several months. I’ve been keeping one for a while–well, several–and I get itchy if I don’t touch it on a regular basis. That’s reason enough to be interested in the topic of blogs.

I thought I’d share a couple unrelated tidbits that have been buzzing around my head lately.

The first tidbit comes from the Pew Internet report on blogs. Get it and read it. Two statistics have stuck in my head since I read the report.

Eight percent of Internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog.
….
Fully 90% of bloggers say they have read someone else’s blog, compared with 39% of all Internet users who say they have done so.

The biggest consumers of blogs are bloggers. For some reason, this fascinates me.

The second tidbit is about community. If you’ve been following along, I have a friend who is starting a blog. Writing for an audience is critical for him; I think this is one reason why he is so comfortable on forums. He’s uncomfortable writing without an audience, a feeling that I suspect is shared by many bloggers also.

Nite on the AdminZone posted a link to an article, Creating an on-line community without the community? that discusses the frustrations of beginning a forum. Again, the same frustrations exist for the beginning blogger. Although the whole article is worth reading–well-written and only a page–I love what the author says about passion:

Any site on the Internet reflects its creator’s passion. Time, patience, and original quality content will build your community (see #1). Never, ever, count on other people to help you offset your costs. It’s your site, your passion, and your content. Accept responsibility for creating a site: you will either nurture your site, or you will abandon it.

So true. We blog because we love what we do, and we alone are responsible for our blogs’ successes.

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