How do blogs become popular?

My guess is, most become popular because the person or people behind them have a few “great posts,” or they are doing something against the norm or something new, such as scobleizer, who once worked for Microsoft. He “spoke out,” unofficially, for and sometimes against MS, that’s why he became popular. Granted, he is a smart guy (my opinion based on reading some of his stuff), but is anyone really interesting enough to be consistantly on wordpress’ “Top WordPress.com blogs today?” Everyday? I think not…I think people just want to see what he has to say next. Not a bad thing, it’s interesting, actually.

Say one great thing, and you can become “popular” in the blogosphere (as an individual, of course…corporate blogs are a whole other ball of wax.)? I wonder if I’ll ever post that one great thing and make the dashboard of wordpress?….I don’t really care either way (but yeah, it would be cool)… I blog to blog…trying to write more, keep track of things I do, put my thoughts out there…maybe some people will share similar thoughts or have some good input. Maybe it will help my communication skills.

I’m not that familar with all of the “popular” blogs out there, but the only one that I’ve seen that has a lot of useful information is lifehacker. OK, it’s really not a ton of useful information, but they have some cool stuff everytime I look at it.

As for the rest of the blogs I read, they are mostly people I know. People I trust, people I like to listen to. People that I want to “see what they’ll say next.” I imagine that’s why most people read blogs.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t fully understand the blogosphere yet. More communication, more open thoughts, more feedback, more connections…yes, I get all that and think it’s great, but…how do you get people obsessed with it? And, is that a good thing?

China blogging situation

I’ve made my decision on blogging while in China. I have setup DNS forwarding for my domain, www.mannthoughts.com, and will use Yahoo hosting & WordPress. This will allow me to fully access my blog & publish freely. I’m not sure what this means for my blog currently hosted by WordPress… I guess it will still be there with all of the posts. I will have to see if I can forward mannthoughts.wordpress over to mannthoughts.com.

WordPress in China

I think I now have a solution for blogging while in China. I will use BlogDesk to post & manage my blog. I won’t have access to my wordpress dashboard, but I think I can do without it. When in doubt (or blocked), I’ll use flickr to publish.

I am also flirting with the idea of using Yahoo hosting (which will allow me to very easily use wordpress). I’ll simply register a domain, such as http://www.manninchina.com (done) & use that as my blog. I can also just transfer http://www.mannthoughts.com to Yahoo hosting. Not sure what I’ll do yet … I kind of like the idea of a “China only” blog. We’ll see.

Blogging clouds the mind

I always find myself thinking of what I’m going to write about next. When I am out somewhere, or just sitting around thinking, it always leads to…should I write this one down or should I post something about this?

I guess that’s not a bad thing, but sometimes it’s annoying. If I don’t have pen & paper, my cell phone to leave myself a message or a voice recorder, it’s up to my memory to remember what I want to think about more & write about. When that happens, I constantly remind myself about the topic until I can write it down! This leads to not fully enjoying or taking in the experience that you’re in at that time. For example, last night we were trying to navigate our way in the dark waters of the inner coastal. Yes, we have GPS, but for some reason, when you can’t see in front of you, you don’t want to just trust a computer. Now, that was an experience, a very funny experience at that. But, there was something I wanted to remember, so I kept thinking about it, this didn’t let me fully “enjoy” the experience (or help navigate). I forgot what I was trying to remember anyway.

When will we have mental recorders? There is always talk that at some point in the future we will all have computer chips implanted in our bodies. What will they do? Will they be capable of “recording & tagging” thoughts in our minds so we can come back later to get them?

Back in business!

It's been well over a week with no access to wordpress from China, until now! More to write later tonight…I've been keeping a bit of a journal this past week with postings.

Lifehacker

I'm not sure where I came across this blog (lifehacker), but it's pretty good. Mostly provides write ups & tips on freeware. I've also seen posts about how to silk screen your own shirts & how to erase permanent marker from a white board.

Check it out

Post lost

Over the last couple of days, the wordpress servers have been acting up. Just now, I lost a post, a very good post, I must say. It took me about 10 minutes to write and likely won’t be able to put it back in word-for-word. WordPress needs a real-time save function so this doesn’t happen!

Blogging for the first time

I’ve decided to start blogging, about a number of different topics & whatever else comes up. I’m not sure what blogging service or tool to use yet though. So, I’m going to try a few … wordpress (this one), also going to try typepad & blogger.