The People Behind the Posts - The Personalities of Blogging
I read a lot of blogs… and this of course is carefully organised through my RSS reader and carefully divided into appropriate categories.
- There are my normal, standard reads:
- Design
- Development
- Javascript
- Information Architecture
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Then there are the ones that I pay special attention to:
- A Grade
People I personally know and want to read and support or just generally keep up with. - Z Grade
Blogs I really don’t care for, but skim as sometimes they have information I need to read. - People
More about people I have recently found out about, or might be interested in, but not technical or fit under any other topic. - Sandbox
Those I have heard about but still need to prove their worth to me and move into a permanent section.
I am sure we all have our own personal taxonomies when it comes to organising our daily reads, but one thing I recently noticed is just how much real life affects some of these online decisions.
What happens when you meet the people who write the blogs you read every day? What if the person writing the blog does something (online or offline) that boosts or possibly diminishes their online credibility?
I recently just noticed this surfacing in my own behavior when I arrived back to Australia, after a brief stint in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest Interactive. Nothing really spiteful or rewarding in my behavior… just a natural re-shuffling of the hierarchy. When I had a chance to think about my actions, this is what came up:
- The Shuffle
- 3 blogs removed
Arrogance, un-professionalism and mediocre presentations or social meetings with some people I met during the conference. I can’t see the same valuable information in these blogs as I once did in the past. - 2 blogs moved to A Grade
Killer presentations, great offline beer conversations or just hearing a few really good things about a few people. - 2 blogs moved to Z Grade
I still need to stay in the loop with some of these blogs, but the magic is not there anymore. - 5 in the sandbox
Random cards I seem to have picked up but don’t remember enough to categorise… could have been the Texan beer.
Does this happen with you or can you totally separate the offline vs. the online presence?
I find this topic fairly interesting right now as there seems to be a bit of a buzz in the blog world involving just this, the blurring of professional vs. personal postings of certain prolific bloggers in our industry. This might fit in there somewhere as a slightly less obvious knock on effect of some of these actions… even more obvious when you meet these people in person.
What if you met me? Would I remain in your reader?
Comments
- Cheryl says: April 17, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
Are all 12 of the ones you’ve changed due to the fact that you met the faces behind the monitors or were they part of a natural shuffling?
I’ve found that meeting people have enhanced their blogs, with the exception of one. Worth reading is an article by Charlie Brooker about enjoying reading people he can’t stand. I have to admit, I do get a peverse satisfaction from reading blogs by people I dislike, I’m not sure why - maybe because I enjoy being outraged?
On the other hand, I’ve gained about 20 new blogs from SXSW, about half of which I’m really enjoying. Meeting people in real life really does enhance the blog reading experience for me, although meeting authors of books I love detracts from the reading experience. I’m really not sure why.
- Craigus says: April 18, 2007 @ 11:02 am
I’ve had nearly all my A grade perceptions jogged at one stage or another.
An author’s career change, an off topic comment in a social web application, an unreturned “friend” status, a sub-par book offering - there are many ways to knock blog authors off the pedestals we place them on.
It can be tough some times to overlook personalities and focus on practicalities.
The good news is that with the online communities we travel in, if someone has fallen from grace we’ll soon hear if they are working to redeem themselves.
- Standardzilla says: April 18, 2007 @ 11:21 am
@cheryl - I figure my removals from A Grade are from real life meetings… but not so much as I don’t like someone but I figure you trust a blog at face value sometimes.
When you finally meet someone, you may just simply disagree with their point of view or they may not be what you imagined re: what they stand for, so this just changes the validity of some blogs afterwards.
@Craigus - I agree, the industry we work in is a fluid one. Sandbox for a while, then A-grade… repeat and rinse.
- Ben Buchanan says: April 18, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Meeting the person behind the keyboard does change the way I view a blog, simply because now it’s just a little more personal/”real”. If I like someone I am probably a bit more likely to read their blog; and vice versa. I do however maintain you can still learn plenty from people even if you don’t like them - if that wasn’t true, universities would grind to a halt ;)
Meeting the people behind the blogs you read does also remind you that everyone’s human, with all the quirks and wonderful-crazy things that entails. It can be tempting to treat blogs like they’re always well thought out, meticulously edited… which is silly :) It also reminds you that people change their minds. What they blogged once they might disagree with now.
- Standardzilla says: April 18, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
@ben - good point about changing your mind on a blog, even I am guilty of that here. I guess it’s good to see people break down there thoughts, learn things and expose that process through their own words.
- Lucas Ng says: April 23, 2007 @ 11:02 pm
It definitely helps if you met the blogger in real life, as you said, it helps reinforce or forces you to reinterpret the blogger.
I read your blog because I met you in person and you weren’t a douchebag!
Standardzilla is on my regular reads, because you combine elements - an Australian perspective on SEO, design & dev - that are rarely found in the blogosphere.
- Tim Lucas says: April 24, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
Interesting post on the inner workings of Scotties brain.
What hit me most about this is how you structure your feeds. I really don’t have much structure to my blogroll organisation (see my blogroll), and I blame the fact that my reading habits have always been chaotic. Any more structure than what I have now usually breaks down in a month or two as I find it hard to categorise many things. I notice I categorise much more on topic than personality type, because I thought I’d prefer to be looking at similar blog posts with a similar mind set.
I found meeting people at last year’s SXSW *really* changed my feed subscriptions. It’s interesting, as you say, and futher reinforces the importance of going to real life events: to give context to everything you’ve read and will read, which will allow you to filter, find and learn more effectively in the imperonal medium that is the internet.
The downside to something is that somebody may have a fantasic persona in their publication, but a real life persona that grates on you, the the latter ends up tarnishing the former. I’d imagine this would happen all the time with peoples favourite columnists.
- Standardzilla says: April 24, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
@tim - yeah, I tend to be a bit anal but it doesn’t really work to my advantage. My feeds are divided much like yours, more topical and sectioned, but then it breaks out of that mold with more personal sections that started small but are now growing out of control so it doesn’t work quite as well as it used to.
I always seem to go back and re-evaluate my structure or just do a massive cull to make it more manageable.
Same problems at work when it comes to figuring out the ‘ultimate to-do list’.
@Lucas - “you weren’t a douchebag!” - best/funniest comment so far :-)
