16 of 30 - Blogological Recap

   A year ago today I discovered the blogosphere. I was messing with this thing that shows you how you are connected to any livejournal user through friends and friends-of (I lost the link to it when my comptuer decided to randomly erase all my bookmarks), and between myself and kris there was a incomple who appeared to be on a mission to make 30 interesting posts in thirty days. Intrigued I investigated and found others doing the same. I had discovered 30 in 30 halfway through.
   Not only were they on a bizarre blog related quest, but they had even developed somewhat of a philosophical framework about this thing we call the Blogosphere. Fascinated, I delved deeper into this blogology.
   Basically the blogosphere is divided into two main camps. There are underbloggers, and there are megabloggers. Underbloggers use livejournal as a sort of diary.. they don't really care if anyone is reading, they just wanted a place to ramble. There's nothing wrong with that really, if you're into that kind of think. Megabloggers on the other hand write to be read. As such megabloggers strive to be interesting and amusing. 30 in 30 is about megabloggery.
   Many megabloggers measure their success by the size of their friends-of list, or even by the ratio of their friends list to their friends-of list. This unfortunately seems more likely to result in bloglitest than anything else, with the likes of say incomple with his .418 to 1 ratio not friending me after over a year of running with the same blog crowd, because adding friends reduces ratio. I did a thorough study of blogological statistics last year and determined that the best indicator of megablog success is average comments per entry. Also very interesting to note is friends-ofs per month the livejournal has existed, ie how many people friend you per month. One more statistic that has some meaning, comments received / comments made: if you have a higher ratio, don't get excited, you're just not bothering to respond -- but if you have a low ratio, people are leaving you hanging all the time, you need to improve your comment quality! 1.23 was the average of the study group, of which most were within .4. If you're below .6, you may be a loser.

   Needless to say, one is by definition not a megablogger if they post friends-only and similarly in contempt of the spirit of 30 in 30 if they disable comments.

   Also, evilblogger nibot has led an outcry of persons outside megabloggist community against so-called "meta-entries" -- entries about entries, or about making entries, or whathaveyou. First of all, I'd like to begin with an ad hominem attack, that is, that this theory has been proposed by someone who is clearly evil. Secondly I'd like to point out that some awesome entries have been made that are in fact metabloggistic. Thirdly, I'd like to point out that there's no compelling reason to disallow such entries. If you do it to the point that people are tired of hearing you talk about talking, then you've violated megablog anti-boring ordinances, but if you can make it amusing, its all good in my opinion. Opponents say its cheating of some kind I think, but I'd like to hear in exactly what way it shortchanges the readers before we start throwing that about. In conclusion, nibot is just a trouble-making naysayer.


Poll of the Day - this link to last poll should have been included in this question.
[Poll #514558]


Picture of the Day

Kristy has brilliant kitten photographing skillz

Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: Still Here - Its way too hot here
   Year Ago Today: Megaunderbloggery - The madness begins!