Book Blogger Hop Nov 5
This is the Book Blogger Hop, a Blog Party and link list hosted by Crazy-for-Books.comToday's question is:
"What are your feelings on losing followers? Have you ever stopped following a blog?"
I have so few regular readers that to worry about losing them seems counterproductive. I just write what I would enjoy reading, and readers will either enjoy that or they won't. A lot of people stop by this site to get information on a particular book, and aren't interested in following the blog. That's fine too.
I find the second part to be sort of a double-edged question. It implies the sort of Follow-for-Follow rule that I just can't do, partially because I don't use Google Friend Connect. If someone comes by and leaves a comment, I'll check out his or her blog, and will probably follow it for a while (via RSS). I read all my blogs and feeds via an RSS reader, and I freelance, such that when I'm working, I don't have time to do anything but work. This means that at the end of the day, I have tons of articles to page through, from book blogs, science blogs, feminist news, world news, theater news, webcomics...it takes a while. If a month or so goes by and I realize that I haven't enjoyed anything or learned anything from the posts by a particular blog or website, I'll remove it from my feed. I can't follow everything; there just aren't enough hours in the day.
I think, if you never stop following anything, either you're probably not reading much of it, or you've left no time in your life to read books. And aren't we book reviewers all doing this to celebrate reading?
I think the Google Friend Connect makes people too distracted about the amount of people that follow them. Granted I like seeing a number there but it doesn't bug me too much if people stop following. And I do hate the "follow-for-follow" business that so many people seem to do. If you write interesting content, I'll follow you, not just to increase a pointless reader number.
ReplyDeleteI love the little bunny who's in all your photos. Very cute!
ReplyDeleteIt's true that you have to make time to read at some point. I follow quite a few blogs but I don't read every single post. I like to have a lot of posts to scan through, to give me an idea of what's going on in the blogosphere. I'll choose a few posts each week to actually read in depth and comment on. Sometimes a post catches my interest and sometimes it doesn't. But that doesn't mean I'll never read anything from the blog...just not this day.
@Red: Yes, exactly. Although having said all that, it's very nice to get comments from new people!
ReplyDelete@Chelle:
Thanks! The bunny is a figurine I've had probably since the mid-80's (which is why she's a little beat up), and since my other online activities are posting custom toy art and reviewing toys, I wanted to give my posts a fun twist.
I like your articulation of scanning through blogs, which I definitely do as well, especially with news feeds. I have to be overall bored with a feed to completely strike it from my list, but it does happen.