Weblog Versus Listserv
Lately I’ve been neglecting my weblog in favor of a slightly more old-fashioned methodology: I’ve been sending out periodic posts via email to those I know personally, who I think will find them interesting. Either that or sending out posts to special-interest mailing lists of which I am a member (mostly media or cultural studies related). The benefits of this so far seem encouraging, such as:
1. I get more replies and and comments. Hypothesis: non-webloggers are more comfortable interacting via email than the web.
2. I suspect my posts actually reach more people. This may seem counterintuitive, because of the “public” nature of the web. However, some people must forward my email posts onto others, in other words–the content comes to the audience, instead of the other way around. Since my weblog isn’t really hyperlinked from many outside sources, the total amount of readers seems lower than with email. (Of course, it could be the increased feedback percentage from email that is skewing my perception on the total aggregate reader numbers–I didn’t actually conduct a statistical analysis.)
I do see some negatives as well. Namely, the “privatization” of the posts, their lack of availability to content aggregators (RSS subscribers, web spiders, etc.), and the possibility of directly sending unwanted content to uninterested parties.
It seems that despite their intrinsic “coolness” factor, there are many micro-content publishing instances, for me at least, in which weblogs are not the best solution.
The irony of my partial rejection of using a weblog is that I’m a participant in a proposed panel at the AoIR conference this fall–the topic? Weblogs.*
* which brings up an interesting footnote: every other person on the panel used the slang term “blog” instead of “weblog” in their proposal. Am I the only one who finds that term to be a bit silly sounding when used in a professional/scholarly environment?
error wrote:
Perhaps this is an example of academia using words like “blog” instead of “weblog” because neither is really a word?
What the hell do I know anyway?
Also, Re: Lists
I really don’t mind email lists but I think it’s best to set up an email list that mixes with your blog. That is really what MT needs, perhaps it has it and I just don’t know it.
It would be nice though.
You update your blog and it’s set to different email lists (or whatever).
That would really bridge the gap on all of it assuming you control the list and were able to set up replies to be filtered into certian threads.
Posted 12 Mar 2003 at 3:44 am ¶
emil wrote:
notification … yes, you should use the notification option.
Posted 16 Jun 2003 at 1:56 pm ¶