Is being liked an obligation?
I'm starting to realize that I'm a lot more impulsive on the net than I ever am in real life. I made a comment on Avalonstar and the response sparked a new post… which brought about a question. Is being liked an obligation? (I had been meaning to write about this after 37 Signals closed their comments, so better late than never.)
The only person that can answer this question is you. It is up to the blogger to decide whether or not they want to be liked.
Signals vs. Noise
Let's look at 37 Signals, and their Signals vs. Noise blog. They have never stood up and said, "we want to be liked," but I think we can assume from the ads on the page and the feedreader count below them that they blog to be read. Besides, their advertisers pay for inclusion, not clicks, which means that if the readership of SvN ever drops, the advertisers are being ripped off.
So 37s asked the question: "Have we jumped the shark?" The replies were mixed, but a lot of readers said things like: "You used to blog about design, and it was really interesting. Now you've digressed to promoting your products and writing random stuff that isn't very relevant at all. I don't read SvN as much as I used to." (Was this reply well founded? Considering that the blog is titled "A design and usability blog: Signals vs. Noise," yes.)
If you ask me, comments like these are constructive criticism. If you want to keep your readership high, these comments are worth gold. And despite the fact that comments like these prompted 37s to close their comments and lash out against this kind of talk, looking at SvN now implies that in the end, they listened. Comments are on and there's a smidge of design talk. And the numbers are still up.
Every other successful blog
It's easy to say, while your blog is successful, that you don't care at all what people think of your blog. But ask yourself what you would do if somehow, someway, people stopped reading. Would you try to bounce back to regain the readership you once had? I think you would. You would close the blog and start a new one, or maybe, before the readership really dropped to zero, say, "hey everyone, I'm going to do this this and this, you'll like it I promise." It will never happen, because you're already linked in to 9Rules, or across a thousand other blogs, and you no longer have to struggle to get people to read your blog. For the rest of us, there's no point in hiding it: we really do care. For 99% of bloggers, there's no point to blogging if no one reads it. That's why we submit our sites to search engines, and blog-traffic-sites, and 9Rules, and we trackback, and recommend our own posts on other sites, and put our links in our signatures, and so on. For us the answer is obvious: yes, if you want readers.
The Refridgerator
But back to the successful blogs. So your blog is like your house. Your content is good food in your refridgerator. You invited people in to eat. They ate your food, and enjoyed it.
Then the food changed, and someone didn't like it so much. They walked out the door. They:
- a. Said, "I don't like the food anymore, I'm leaving."
- b. Said nothing.
In case [a] you have someone letting you know they are displeased. And it's annoying, and frustrating, and you would rather not hear it. But who is being more curteous? Neither is saying that the food has to be good. They just don't like it anymore. But [a] is letting you know. Is that a bad thing?
Depends on whether you want to be liked or not.
In retrospect
Looking back I know my comment on Avalonstar was impulsive. If every post for the last few months had been a three or four line entry without content, then it might have been justified. But that wasn't the case.
Maybe there's a lesson here for everyone. As a reader, maybe it's best to forget the courtesy. If you are on your way out the door, just go. But I don't know if I'll be able to do that. If I like a blog, I just don't see myself leaving without giving some reason. And I like Avalonstar.
My blogging, of late, amounts to me yapping and then replying to my own entries. Really doing well
Thanks Dave, for this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davekellam/75981829/
Music of Michael Jackson is going to live for ever no matter what, I think It's became a legendof 'pop', He was so depressed last time and has lots of problems, poor guy - that was probably end for him - so sad all we can do is keep his music in our hearts.
I want to listen good music!
What's up?