23 of 30 - BlogSETI

[aggienaut]

   I discovered the megabloggist community that does 30 in 30 by freak chance, as I explained in my 16th 30 in 30 post. Since then I've grown to become friends with a number of people from that group, spread out across the other side of the United States (& Israel). Only recently did it occur to me that just as this community of people with similar blogging styles was out there in the blogosphere and only found by chance, there surely must be other isolated communities of bloggists similar to these waiting to be found! To find and them and unite the groups would be a great event in the history of the blogosphere! And so I commenced BlogSETI.
   And so E.M.O.S.N.A.I.L. personnel set about erecting huge satellite dishes and dispatching probe droids to the distant reaches of the blogosphere!

Phase I
   The obvious start was to do searches by interest. Searches for specific things like "the blogosphere," or "technique and craft" yielded only schoolofblog, our own central command, so I had to go with more generic interests such as "blogging." Unfortunately these generated a ridiculous number of results so the best I could do for a point of reference was look for aptly named communities. It turns out there are several communities dedicated to rating or recommending livejournals, but even those approved by these rarely were worth my time, and led me to the realization that livejournals worth finding aren't going to be in such a community. I did find the real trophy of these search in this way though, but I'm saving it for the end of this entry for suspense purposes.

Phase II
   And so I moved on to Phase II -- findings weren't going to emerge from any kind of rating or recommendation community, I was going to have to find a way to narrow down the field of individuals. This was done through use of more specific interests such as "rapier-like wit."
   In all cases livejournals that clearly did not have potential were weeded out through harnassing that blogological data and taking a quick glance at their stats. And you all said I was mad! Having analyzed the statistics from my previous study I determined that the most consistent indicator of livejournals in the target group was a comments recieved to made ratio of parity or above (reception of more comments than made), so I quickly moved on from livejournals with low ratios, but generally took a look at the journal itself if there was parity or better and no other obvious indicators of lameitude.
   Now our target group isn't all megabloggers, but megabloggers who take an interest in the blogs of others. Thus amazing megabloggers such a hipstomp (omgwtf 1285 friends-of), whom I discovered during the search, wouldn't count because he barely comments even in response to comments in his own lj. What we're looking for is a community (in the unofficial sense of the word) of megabloggers.
   So I'd find someone that looked like they had potential. At this point I was becoming delirious so I couldn't really read and evaluate the quality of writing of these livejournals anymore, so aside from a healthy level of commenting, I looked for livejournals that took the time to integrate links and pictures into their entries. Then I looked at the comments and looked for people that commented frequently and engaged in multiple comment strings with the author -- thus potentially implying that they might be the kind of friends our target community is made of. Then I'd investigate their livejournal to determine megablogness.
   So I was delirious at this point so its up to you guys to evaluate these livejournals but these are the leads I had generated by the time I was tired of it all. Potential Group 1: nowaitbutlisten (she finds some interesting stuff to post like this and this), and michaelpop (almost exclusively writes about music, but makes good use of links and pictures, and hey you all like music right?), Potential Group 2: newboro, i_and_i (despite the white on white font), and fisticuffs. Potential Group 3: pavel_lishin is the first one I found in this group, and the only one I think the casual observer is likely to find above average, but several of his friends, such as efriesen and xed_geek, look like they could be roped in to something like 30 in 30, maybe for next year.. (=
   Also surrealcereal looks like she has the target blogging mentality but I never got around to finding more members of a group around her (incidently I found her using the old method of seeing who falls in the connection between me and someone else, based on the idea that people closer to my friends lsit are more likely to be interesting to me, it tells me which of someone's friends is most likely to be interesting to me. In this case she was part of the hipstomp > surrealcereal > incomple > emosnail chain).

   But the most interesting result of all, as I said I found in Phase I. It was a community of bloggists, that, get this, decided to blog every day for a month!! Those loons!! And they did it in April. The community: ljblogathon. Its more oriented toward writing than toward entertaining (as our 30 in 30 is), with several of their participants apparently writing fiction for many of the entries.

Phase III
   So what now? Is blogSETI to be dismantled and abandoned? Certainly not. As I mentioned, after looking at dozens and dozens of livejournals I became rather blarney, so (A) I could use the help of the rest of you in looking at the relative results and telling me what you think has potential. (B) there are a number of communities that rate journals, but too many to process them all and no clear indication of which ones are better places to look than others -- obviously these communities need to be rated. The communities I speak of are: _awesome_ljs, _journalreviews, acquaint, ljreviewz, journalreviews, journaltypes, journal_ratingz, journalrating, ljratings, ljreview, rankyourlj, ratemyjournal, review_you, _ljratings, cool_ljs, kickassjournals, rateit. See, way too many. We need to pare that down to those with reliable results. If you think you can assist in taking a gander at one or more of these communities and giving me any thoughts at all on them it will greatly assist the Cause. And perhaps you'll even find an lj or two you like in the process? This task is being consolidated here.
   (C) General SETI should continue. It remains an important objective to find other bloglife out there in the blogosphere. In particular, brave new ways to carry out the blogSETI task must be developed. As such if you have any advices on carrying out this task I'd be pleased to hear them. I remember there was a downloadable little program I'd found awhile ago that would show you visually the interconnectedness of livejournallers.. that would be very useful in identifying groups. Or there was kind of a meme going around I think which would show what "cliques" a user was in -- that is groups where all members have all other members friended. I no longer have either of these at my disposal but if someone could point me to them that would be awesome. As such, I remain dedicated to blogSETI and so should you!

Comments

[rote.livejournal.com]

Your dedication is amazing. I'm going to keep my eyes open and report anything I find directly to you.

Once I saw malibu_knight's blog and thought it was pretty damn mega, but I havne't been back there to look in many, many moons. !!!

[rote.livejournal.com]

malibu_knight

LJ is driving me mad tonight.

bad lj tags

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

I think it would be rather amusing to creat the livejournal of [Bad LJ Tag]. Whoa actually bad_lj_tag does exist. Damn them. Anyway I'll check out malibu_knight asap.

[apoplecticfittz.livejournal.com]

Blogging for an entire month? What are these guys, mad? It must be a joke.

[surrealcereal.livejournal.com]

Dear Mr. emosnail,

If anything, I am an underblogger. All I really do is post pictures, and ask people to go to shows with me. Seriously, the high point of my blogging existence was when hipstomp commented on an entry in my old blog, and that was a super long time ago. So yeah.. I'm nothing special.

Sincerely,
surrealcereal

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Dear Ms. surrealcereal,

Yeah and further reflection you are probably correct. I think I was delirious from my insane BlogSETI quest. On any account, I think your livejournal is interesting. I like pictures. I've rather stopped for this 30 in 30 thing we're doing but usually I post a picture with every update. Also if hipstomp friended you, you MUST be worth reading. (=

How did you come upon this entry? I'd imagine you must have been quite shocked to find yourself mentioned by some random person like this.

Sincerely,
emosnail

[surrealcereal.livejournal.com]

Thanks, pictures are fun. Oh, and I think the only reason hipstomp added me back was because I'm Asian. Seriously, have you ever looked at that guy's friends list?

I found this entry when I noticed that you had added me, and this was the most recent one. And yes, it was kind of weird and scary.

blogSETI

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

haha my friend shid is like that. Except he has a gf now so he calmed down. Some people get the asian fetish bad.

You know incomple?

Re: blogSETI

[surrealcereal.livejournal.com]

More or less, yeah. We hung out some when I went up to New York to visit colleges this spring.

Re: blogSETI

[surrealcereal.livejournal.com]

Also, I don't think it's as much an Asian fetish as it is our tendency to travel in packs.

asian fetish

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well shid is one of several people I know who isn't asian but has a creepy affinity for asian girls, thus having no such excuse.

[michaelpop.livejournal.com]

This is all pretty fascinating stuff. Oh the wonders of Googling your own name.

"Makes good use of links and pictures" is the front-runner for what's going to be ingraved on my headstone.

Good use of links and pictures

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

And of course there'll be a picture and a hyperlink (somehow) right there on the epitaph.

Re: Good use of links and pictures

[michaelpop.livejournal.com]

Hahah, it's funny 'cos it's true. I'm sure by the time I'm in the ground the technology for that sort of thing will be in place.

By the way, I was really impressed with your entries on LJ statistics and your theories in regards to popularity. While it's true that people with high comment counts are good conversationalists as well as people who comment on other people's journals a lot, there's something to be said for knowing a lot of your LJ-friends in real life. Also, having said LJ friends inhabiting 9-5 desk jobs where LJ is a reprieve from monotony doesn't hurt. We banter to keep ourselves entertained; sometimes it's the only thing that keeps us sane.

Re: Good use of links and pictures

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think most conversation probably does take place between people who know eachother in real life, and thats especially the case when multiple people mutually know eachother -- wahts interesting about the group of people who do the "30 in 30" thing is that very few of them know eachother in real life, or those that have met, met on livejournal first.

Of course the study of blogology continues. Suggestions are always welcome for further areas to research in -- especially if one can conceive of a way to "empirically" research it with statistics or whatnot.

Re: Good use of links and pictures

[michaelpop.livejournal.com]

The "30 in 30" thing is something else that I thought was cool. I've been thinking of doing something like that for a while now, because I'm only averaging a post a week. I used to post more, but I found that with so many people reading it makes you reassess the things you can post about. Can't get too personal anymore, y'know? Never know who's reading... And I also find that increased comment counts stifle posting, at least in my case. There's a sort of pressure (whether actual or self-imposed) to "deliver" and it's been something that's bothered me for at least the past six months. I want to regain control of my journal/blog and feel free posting what I want, when I want, without considering my audience. I want to post for me again.

Re: Good use of links and pictures

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Ah too bad you missed 30 in 30! Once I was doing my "blogSETI" thing I was very much of the opinion that I should have done it like a month before 30 in 30 so that if I found anyone with potential they'd be able to participate.


Yeah I too used to post on a daily basis but have succumbed somewhat to the pressures of a larger audience. Looking back at my very first entries they seem incredibly silly to me, and I can tell I didn't think anyone was reading. Now not only do I have a lot of people I feel compelled not to subject to a pointless entry, but my parents read my livejournal, as do a wide variety of other people, such as my enemies in student government -- opponents once called a removal hearing for me to remove me from my position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the student government of UC Davis entirely based on things I'd written in my LJ... but they failed miserably at their goal.

But yeah, thats what 30 in 30 is about, its about challenging yourself and reinventing your blog.