Blogging, bloglinking, the pointless blog and parsitism

In my job, I've noticed that I come across a lot of blogs on the net. Ok, I'm expanding the truth a little. When I'm sat in my office at work I come across a lot of blogs but the work I do has no orientation whatsoever to blogging. The world of blogs strikes me as a curious one indeed though.

The first aspect is that there are just so many of them. If you looked at every blog on blogger.com, you would probably be looking til the World Cup. If you then start looking at livejournal, myspace and others, you will be forever reading blogs. In fact, it seems to me that the number of blogs has reached saturation points yet with people self-absorbed in the goings on of their own lives, it will continue to expand.

I'm as guilty of this needless expansion as anyone. Because of the way I have only plugged my blog to a handful of people, most of whom don't know me personally, it's almost certain that my entries are read infrequently (I should get a counter to find out how little really). I would estimate that each thing I write is read, possibly twice by other people but it is hardly mass media.

Still, I don't think that the number is what troubles me with blogs. No, I think it is the way in which the entire blog community has no top-down structure. If someone wanted a web page about Southend, they would go Start->Sport->Football->England->SouthendUtd->page. If someone was looking for it they would find it amongst other similar sites. Because of the way that blogs are set up and because of the way that they encompass various subjects and views, such a structure is not practical. Instead, Blogs enter the world as entities in a sea of uncertainty. Over time, they drift (or surf) around the sea and encounter other bloggers. If they share a common interest or get on, they build a bond and make a note of how to find them. When they find more, they share notes and so the networking grows.

It's remarkable to see this and it would be a glorious network if content could be relied upon.

Something that annoys me more and more as the Internet expands is the phenomenon of information overload. This was first identified as something that managers would experience as their companies' computer systems grew more and more sophisticated. As the systems become more sophisitcated, more information is produced and needs to be filtered to avoid the information becoming useless or unused. Apologies to people at the useless end of the scale but this seems to be the way that blogs are going.

As I tend to do, I started bloglinking whereby you find someone's blog and click another link they have. On the second page, you read a bit then click a link and so it goes on. You put trust in your first link to have good links, then their friends to have good links and so on. Through doing this, I've realised that (on the 5th click by the way) you can find some terrible sites with the most insignificant or irrelevant information that seems to be no more than tittle-tattle. In fact, if it was tittle-tattle, you'd be grateful. Instead, it will be people saying something along the lines of "today I'm happy. Here's a picture of my cat".

I know what you might be thinking. "Why, if he detests it so much, does he not put the time spent looking through teo lines down to experience and click on". Well, this is a tricky question because I honestly don't know why i can't just click through a page when it looks like it will be terrible. I seem to have a compulsion with blogs to read near enough all of the present information on the page. I don't know whether I'm looking for a previous post that shows current ones in an ironic light so I can laugh along with them or whether my faith in humanity tells me it must have just been a bad day but I go to sites and I have to read them. Unfortunately, this fills my head with information on how someone I've never known has been for the last ten days via the medium of a smiley or sad face. I don't want to know that. Reading why pigeons bob their head while they walk or who is the new number 2 at Yeovil carries some significance to me but "Today I am :). Went to the shops but they had no tomato. Got Beetroot instead" is useless and very throwaway.

I also fairly detest parasitism between blogs. If it's stored once and the person is in your little community, there is no justification for bastardising visitors from other sites by nicking their features, even if they do consent. If you are to copy something from elsewhere, at least pay people the respect of sending others to their site rather than just displaying it for yourself. The only time I have been happy with it was when I discovered "Backstroke of The West" taken by a guy in Beirut. I believe it had disappeared from its original space though.

Whoo. That was quite a rant by the end. Needless to say, none of the pages linked from mine strike me as anything like this. In fact, watching badgerbadgerbadger.com may be a better use of your time if you are thinking about bloglinking!

Ok, I just typed that straight out with no real forethought so it may be revised. If your site is worth a look feel free to post it here.