As you're all aware, Kinux is doing a revision to the blog pack, in which some of the inactive blogs will be dropped and replaced with active ones. As a blogger, obviously my self-worth is dependent on my hits per day so the idea of being in the pack has crossed my mind. Now it's time to decide whether or not to put my name forward.
Why I should be in the blog pack:
1. I post regularly about the internet spaceship game eve online.
You'd think that this would be the key metric, and indeed "Being part of the Pack comes with its responsibilities and obligations. The first and foremost is to blog regularly". I've got that covered, and even have some useful information and unique content.
If I was really pushing for inclusion I would have put that at the bottom of the post as a gotcha... but posting about internet spaceships isn't enough. The blog pack isn't just a list of blogs, it's a social media group: "for the Pack, I wanted to create this sense of belonging to an elite group of bloggers".
Why I should not be in the blog pack:
"Here's a list of To Dos that all members should strive to accomplish as part of their duties".
1. "Comment on Pack members blogs". I only comment when I have something to say, and usually something to contribute. This is very rare.
2. "When writing a post, try to link to each other posts, bringing the community even closer together". Sure, I'll do this... when somebody has recently written something which supplements my post. This has happened maybe one time in the last six months. Not that there aren't blogs I'd like to link; I've recently followed 12th's posts about his experience in the northern war with interest but no particular way to link them to what I was posting about at the time, see what I did there, and I'm definitely not going to make a post just linking somebody else's post.
3. I'm not very good at this. I use a facts-only style (my first titan kill warranting a whole four sentences) and the brevity and lack of adverbs surely makes me less engaging than somebody who can actually write, and if I have nothing to write about I just won't post.
4. I'm not a social media person. I don't participate in banter blogs (I would if there was one I wanted to respond to, but there haven't been), play stupid blog games or use any other form of social media. The blog pack and its guidelines are about community, whereas I only really care about the game.
Other issues:
1. Does the blog pack work? While the pack has succeeded in its' purpose of creating a close-knit group that gets lots of page views, for me the purpose of a blog pack is to aggragate posts. Out of approximately three blogs that I currently follow with real interest (see right, subtract two) none are in the blog pack. The exclusivity of the blog pack means that it misses content I actually care about.
Building a better blog pack - one which contains all the blogs, but does not have wow 'tards - would be simple. I've even figured out how to make it so subscribing works like the Kinux pack (single item) rather than the evebloggers bundle (hundreds of subscriptions inside a folder). It's an intriguing idea, though probably not worth the effort since the final product would just be the evebloggers bundle without the non-eve shit.
So, anyway. I decided not to link myself on kinux' post. Can't be a failure if you never try, right? \o/
Nice post, I will link you on my blog (The Life of Dead Jester)
ReplyDeleteYour last point is easily addressed. As you probably know I maintain the Active EVE Bloggers OPML, which you can either download as a file for importing into the feed reader of your choice. Or (and heres the bit which will probably interest you) subscribe to as an aggregated feed. You can find it here http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F16180019217194786175%2Flabel%2FEVE%20Active%20Blogs.
ReplyDeleteOne feed for all active blogs, which will allow you to pick and choose the indiviual ones you want to subscribe to.
Hope this helps
I just follow many of the blogs via www.evebloggers.com
ReplyDeleteAlexia did a great job putting that together and much simpler that me digging through tons of blogs and other links just to see when someone has written something new.
durzo: Thanks for the link. I'll drop you one as well, though I tend to trim my links pretty aggressively on the rare occasions when I get around to it.
ReplyDeleteMandrill: That link (less the period) actually does do what I want in terms of having a single feed; I had been subscribed via http://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user%2F16180019217194786175%2Fbundle%2FEVE%20Active%20Blogs , which was a little messy.
Peeps coming from astral's blog: I'd recommend checking the tags at right. 'screenshots' and 'content' will probably be the most interesting.
Parasoja, the pack is what you make of it. I met and got to know both Mynxee and Roc Wheiler before they became well known in EvE online. with 50 blogs in the pack now it is not hard to see different things, but what is app rent is the differences in point of view.
ReplyDeleteI am not a very active guy on social media things but many of those are optional, so as one of the founding members included in the original 20 I can say I have seen a ton of traffic I normally would not have gotten and all in all the experience has been one I have thoroughly enjoyed.
The Eve Blog Pack was most relevant when the number of Eve blogs was miniscule and they were mostly unknown at large. Now that the number of eve blogs is over 500 the CK blog pack has less importance in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest benefit is that it is rolled into Capsuleer which opens the blogs on it to a lot more non-blog-reading people on the go.