1Y - Just another review on blogging
Initially this whole thing was about communicating from Malaysia to Germany, to get my pictures from overseas online and to create some persistent viewable memories. So I started this blog project as my personal Malaysia diary.
I did never question, whether this was the right medium to keep my friends up to date. Guess some would have been happier to get individual emails or some monthly emails with reports about what would be happening abroad. From my personal experience reading such emails, I had decided that at least for me those mails were rather inadequate. When you finally invest the time to read through such mostly long summaries, the events which are covered are already ancient. There are also so many topics covered, that you just don’t know what to say. And if you read such a complex work, you will feel obliged to write back something rather highly sophisticated. Using a blog, you will have more short postings, and there are chances, that some friends would just write something less sophisticated.
Meanwhile I have learned, that blogging enables to far more than just an easier way of communication with friends. Actually it is only suited for this communication if your friends are willing to go this way with you – they need to read the blog and need to comment. I had to make the experience that the first of these requirements can be achieved. It is just a little less convenient. Although your blog might give the reading person many more features than just a simple email it is less convenient. The reason is very understandable – you can’t just force somebody to visit your website, but you can demand that somebody reads your emails. Anyway, if someone cares he will take his time to have a look on your blog from time to time. But the second requirement – to get feedback via your blog from these friends is a really invincible obstacle. Until today the majority of my readers has reservations against commenting on my blog. The number of people commenting on my blog, who don’t own their own weblog moves against zero!
But there are other users that can be motivated to contribute to your blog – people just like yourself – fellow bloggers. Initially I had hoped, that I could keep contact to my friends from Malaysia with the help of my blog – but not all of my friends down there seem to care very much about my writings here. But due to my blog I got new friends in Malaysia – bloggers like me
Hey Jay!
I found loadsa great lives here. Great stories and great experiances. Ever since I stared blogging, it has changed my life drastically. Glad to know you. 