Sunday, February 28, 2010

Blogging is for Hosers

What's that ghost doing, flashing a gang sign or V for Victory? Do ghosts have gangs? They have lists, everyone and their grandma knows that, but a posse, a tribe, a sewing club...? Is this the age of ghost diversification?

It may very well be, but...

Ghosts don't blog. They don't go for that, no can do.

This doesn't mean they aren't helpful, particularly of late when it comes to dropping on Entrecard sites.

I've been using Dropzone for a little over a week and have some thoughts. It is a good service that goes a long way toward alleviating sore wrists at the end of a long click session. It reduces time spent dropping too. My main gripe about EC has been that it takes so damn long to do and Dropzone oh so very helpful in that area.

It's a conduit to a great diversity of blogs. Admittedly, there are no small number of "empty" blogs out there which aren't posted to regularly or that exist just to hock some product or service. Leave them to heaven. No sooner do you discover a new blog with fine writing, photography or advice and they are forgotten.

The jury is still out whether droppers now have an excuse to visit blogs without reading them. But blogs are about sharing, engaging, conversation; any other reason is for hosers.

For more details, check out Dropzone, where the gent in charge is doing his best to provide a sound means of dropping with less clicks. No, his name isn't Caspar the Friendly Ghost.

On a less spiritual note, I've been thinking about this crazy thing called blog.

How did we ever get by without them? Only a few years ago, keeping a blog was an elite activity, practiced by select few. Now it's infiltrated every level of society and you can find blogs of all kinds.

For me it a carries over from keeping a diary. Unlike this blog, which exists as code, there is a giant, not very elegant pile of journals in my closet. Those times when I consider what I would grab first if my house caught fire, they are high on the list. Not very practical.

If I stuck to blogging, it would mean grabbing my laptop from the flames. No heroic notion of saving flammable materials that only increase the chances that I become a ghost. I'd not only be dead but I couldn't blog anymore. Everybody loses.

Still, my journals are more aesthetic. If I ever get my shit together enough to buy a scanner, you'll see what I mean. I'm a decent collage artist and my handwriting (so I've heard) is a marvel of microscopic proportions.

For the time being, I'll stick to not being a ghost. It's served me well this far into life, no reason to start now. Anyhow, I've got enough bad habits.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tip. I agree about Entrecard. It's so time consuming. Now that I'm working full time. It's even more difficult to keep up with the droppers.

Please scan your stuff. Would love to see your writing and artwork.

David Tamayo said...

Well my friend get that scanner I would like to see your work. ;o) As for the dropping, Dropzone has a blurb on his site addressing the issue of how to increase time spent on each site to reduce bounce. I guess in the end it really has to be a partnership between the droppers and the dropees. The droppers should make an attempt to spend more time "visitng" the sites they drop on. The dropees need to provide current posts to induce their desired response from the visitors. How long should a visit be to not be considered a "bounce"?

Doctor Faustroll said...

I don't have the widget either of my blogs, and I continue to get drops.

I removed the widget for two months at one point last year and continued to average 20-30 drops a day.

I haven't dropped on anyone for a couple of weeks, but I don't intend to leave the system until the scumbuckets that run it shut me down for violations of TOS that I reported for a year at one point.

Then I'll file complaints with the regulatory agencies that deal with fraud and similar online lunacy, and we'll see if maybe that gets these assholes to pay attention.

Lin said...

Get the scanner out!!!

I have to say that it is really nice being liberated from EC. It was hard to give up initially, but now the free time has made up for it. I have not noticed a drop in my comments, and I am working to find some new blogs on my own, but I no longer have the stats to worry about. I'm not sorry that I left yet.