the end of blogger innocence
MamaRose posted 32 weeks 2 days ago — I have come to the conclusion that you're only as good as your last blog entry. This is not unlike being an actor who is only as good as their last film, or a singer who is only as good as their last album.
Yes indeed the virtual world can be brutal. New visitors pop in and if your most current entry is not a page turner, they disappear into the internet's black hole never to be seen or heard from again.
Believe it or not there was a time when we weren't quite so concerned about interesting our readers, we started writing about our lives online because it was a safe place to keep our secrets hidden from our families, our spouses and our friends. You didn't have to worry about hiding or locking your diary, you just jumped on the computer, typed your little heart away, and hit "POST". The chances of anyone you knew finding your diary online were minimal...particularly if you created a pseudo identity (like I did).
Back in 2003, when I first started writing on Diaryland, it didn't matter that only a handful of people were reading you, you were content having a few readers who began to feel like family as you tuned into their lives each day and they returned the gesture.
Templates were simple, There was no such thing as RSS feeds, blogger awards, widgets, surveys, or getting paid to blog.
But at some point we stopped writing to please ourselves and started worrying about page rank, traffic, how many sites were linking to you, and making a quick buck by posting about things we wouldn't normally have considered.
Online diaries took on a dramatic transformation as more and more people were creating them, not with the intention of writing about their every day lives, but as a way to make money and deliver information products they wanted to promote - including themselves!
Techno blogs, blogs about entertainment, how to make money blogs, blogs about sports, news blogs, all took over the blogiverse and left the little guy - the one who was still writing about their little lives, feeling less than.
I'll admit I've sold out. I care about increasing my page rank, I'd love to have a lot of traffic, I wouldn't mind winning an award, and I get paid sometimes to write about things I could care less about. But I still try to keep it real by keeping my blog "personal" and writing about my life instead of just entering unoriginal, redundant information.
Yes folks it's true...I'm here to tell you...this is officially the end of blogger innocence.
We may all have a moment of silence to mourn its loss.
