Bloggishness: blogging about blogging

Thanks to Pam Blackstone's three column template post, I've redesigned this blog a bit. I definitely prefer her three-column style to the two-column Blogger template that I'd been using.

I've also been poking about through the sites that cater to bloggers. There is a dizzying array of such services, all catering to bloggers' desires to increase traffic on their sites. BlogExplosion offers an interesting approach: you earn credits by surfing member blogs. You can then redeem those credits by assigning traffic to your blog. Essentially, this puts you at the front of the BlogExplosion surfing queues, so you are guaranteed immediate hits. The problem, though, is that these surfers are randomly coming across your site, and they probably won't be interested in its subject matter. I've noticed that all my BlogExplosion visitors tend to quickly view and leave, which is a little disappointing.

Wikablog is a simple blog directory, a la Wikipedia. It's very easy to build a public, editable page for your blog, and tag it with categories. However, I found that although my blog shows up in some categories (business and internet), it doesn't show up in several other categories that I chose. Wikablog seems relatively unknown; I'll be curious to see if it catches on.

I also joined BlogShares, but I confess that my cursory glance through its help documentation has left me pretty confused. It appears to be a sort of stock market that trades blogs. Web traffic increases the value of a blog. How might this sort of virtual economy evolove, one wonders? For example, the virtual world Second Life already has its own thriving economy, including a stock market. Our digital identities -- or avatars -- are becoming an increasingly important part of our lives. How closely will our financial lives be intertwined with the popularity (web traffic, etc) of our digital selves?

In this blog's "Bloggishness" section (right-hand column) I'll be displaying links to the blog sites that I participate in.

Tags: blogger blogging template BlogExplosion Wikablog BlogShares digital identity