Well, a dreamer. And a writer.

Not too good with the technology that’s a part–big part–of blogging. But I am learning.

So, anyway, I really just wanted you to know that I’m visiting you because Whimzie linked to your blog in a recent post.

And because I drink more than two cups of coffee a day.

But it is decaf.

Sweet dreams.
.-= deb´s last blog ..Out of Control =-.

And Doug, you had some great observations… Thanks. I feel like your last one may be close to the attitude of many. It’s just a pain to link, and the sidebar linkage may make us lazy. I quit putting links on my sidebar simply because of your observation about not being able to control what you may be unintentionally promoting. (i.e., if one of the blogs you link to has a raging rant that you disagree with).

I think a couple of things are related to the decrease in linking. First is probably that the early blogging boom has passed, and some of those folks that linked a lot have moved on. Second, some of those people that still blog have gotten fed up with auto-bot comments and having moderate a mess of stupidity in some of their comments.

Another thing that I see is, with more readers coming into blog-dom, you have more criticism. Not useful criticism, but criticism of “I read that blog you linked to, and while that article was good, did you know that blog linked to some freaky stuff or had some lame info on it” kind. Which, I think leads to being hesitant to link.

For example, I may link to one of your posts which is good, and then hear complaining from anti-iPhone people because of your iPhone posts. Well, I didn’t endorse the iPhone posts (nor do I disclaim them), but I just don’t want people complaining that I linked to an iPhone fanatic. Don’t have time for it.

That may seem ridiculous, but I think it’s part of it. The other part is that newer bloggers like me (although I have crossed 500 post mark!) see the medium differently. It’s more of a posted newsletter or open journal, rather than an interactive situation. I’ll take comments and interact with them, but I’m not really thinking along the line of interacting blog-to-blog with links.

Just a thought.

And I still have a link to you in my blogroll. Maybe that’s it as well? More automated blogrolling/linking, so less intentional linkage in posting? Kind of like other aspects of life. If we can automate it, we do, but then we began to ignore it?

Doug
.-= Doug´s last blog ..August 13 2009 =-.