I started up a roleplaying commentary blog on Live Journal awhile back... http://ravenx99.livejournal.com/ I occasionally do brief movie and book reviews (just one so far), but my primary focus is on gaming, writin gaming stuff, and things in and around gaming that are of interest. (Like complaining that I don't have time to play City of Heroes.) To keep this from being just an ad for my blog, I'll bring up something that I've been thinking about... How do blogs affect discussion group (mailing lists, web forums, newsgroups) traffic? Blogs that accept user comments are a lot like a web forum where only one person (or a limited set of people) are allowed to start conversations. But I think those are like Slashdot... lots of people make comments, but how many of them go back and read any comments made after the initial visit? They don't seem to sustain conversation. There is cross-pollenation of blogs.... I respond in my blog to posts or essays in Gamethink (http://gamethink.blogspot.com/) and The 20 x 20' Room (http://www.20by20room.com/), for instance. But the authors and readers of those blogs may or may not come read my blog. But does any of this reduce list traffic? It probably does... I'm posting short articles on my blog that I'm not posting here, for instance. Is this good or bad? On one hand, it limits conversation and exchange of ideas. On the other hand, it means nobody has to listen to the masses discuss something... you pick the blogs you want to read and you can ditch those you have no interest in. (I hope mine is interesting. I started reading the blogs of some gaming industry "names" and I find them dull... in most cases, because they're not specifically about gaming, and I don't want to know what game writers think about politics and general stuff. That's why I keep my LiveJournal blog focused. If you want to read about my experiences with Netflix or Drumcircles in Kansas, you'll have to find my other blogs. :) (I maintain a couple blogs through Blogger that I host on the Phoenyx. I can see what kind of traffic I'm getting there. I chose my LiveJournal account for my gaming blog, and I'm not sure that there's a way to see how many people are reading it. Kind of a drawback.) -- Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Old immortals never die, they just... don't. ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
