Looking For Some Feedback
I know a lot of people have started to use a new service called BlogExplosion. I admit, I have too. I am starting to wonder about its value though. Although there is some back history to the issue over at my site, I am really just looking to see what people think of the service. I do not want to start discussion of what happened at my site.
The premise is this (from their site):
The concept is very simple. You read other blog sites and they in return visit your blog. Blogexplosion is the internet's first blog exchange where thousands of bloggers visit each other's blogs in order to receive tons of blog traffic. Imagine how many other people out there could be adding your blog to their blogroller and how many people would be reading your blog every day with this sort of attention. It's free to use!
What it looks like to the user is it loads random blogs for you, and you must stay for thirty seconds before moving to the next one. For every two blogs you visit you get one traffic "credit" to generate a visitor to yours.
Here is my post from my experience recently, slightly edited to try to stay on topic...
I wonder. Is this "BlogExplosion" a good thing? I like to think that I write, post links and exist in this space that is my own creative outlet. I have never been judged here. If you don't agree, don't click. Right?
I have made many friends since I started danielphillip.com. In fact, it's nice to have found such diversity in "like minded" people. I have made friends with people in different countries, with different political beliefs, and different moral values. Yet I have never been judged. I guess that is because people came here of their own accord.
"BlogExplosion" is more of a captive audience. You wait the thirty seconds, and get what it gives you. You can't even leave if offended, because you wait for that damn timer (sorry for the language, but I clearly have an "R" rating...)
Thoughts?
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I looked at that BlogExplosion thing. Frankly, it sort of reminded me of all that spam about how much money you can make or how big your dick can be with its promises of loads of blog traffic.
I haven't actually tried it, so I can't make an accurate comparison, but I've had the best luck finding like-minded bloggers (as well as plenty of riffraff) just by surfing the blogrolls of people I already read.
I can see how participating in BlogExplosion might foster a sense of community (because that's kind of what blogging's all about), but it seems kinda cheap and gimmicky to me.
I've actually found a few need reads that I may not have found otherwise. The extra traffic is really a non-issue for me. someone staying on my site for 30 seconds and then clicking on to the next site, isn't doing anything for me. But if I can find a few new places this way, eh, why not?
On the Blogger bar at the top of most Blogger blogs, there's a little button you can click that takes you to another Blogger blog. Yeah, it increases my traffic a little bit, but not in a meaningful way. It's like being in a room with 500 random people and being forced to make small talk with them. I've never tried clicking the "next Blog" button, b/c I'm not all that interested in reading any old thing that's placed in front of me.
I guess it really depends on who you're writing for and if generating traffic and finding new sites is important to you. I won't be all sanctimonious and say "I write for myself" but really, I do write for a very limited audience, which includes primarily my close family members, some good friends, some people from Germany, and 3 people who were my friends in high school who googled my name and found my blog (I'm not sure why those 3 unrelated people were looking for me, but they found me).
It's always nice to have other people reading my blog and to have them leave me comments, but I'd rather they found it through someone else's blogroll than by a mandatory 30 second reading period. Basically I don't want much criticism on my blog. It's my happyfluffy place and if you don't like it, I don't care. And I'll delete their comments if I don't like them.
I also spend way too much time reading blogs as it is, so I'm not looking for new blogs to get attached to. When I do read new blogs, I usually follow up either through someone posting about someone else or through comments they leave (if I'm like, "right on, sistah!" I'm more likely to check out their blog).
So I guess for someone like me Blogexplosion really doesn't have much value.