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| Photo #1 |
Have
you ever written a blog? If so, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If not, and
if you ever do, I dare you not to look at the counter that tells how many
people have viewed your blog and breaks it down by month, or even week or day.
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| Photo #2 |
If
you’re reading Fuori le Mura you probably use
the web enough to know that many bloggers include ads on their blogs and that
they make money each time somebody clicks the add. Thus, they are extra
motivated to create quality content, thereby attracting both readership,
advertisers and, eventually, money.
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| Photo #3 |
But of course there are millions of other
blogs that have no designs on money-making but exist purely out of interest in
a particular topic, out of a desire to share knowledge about such skills as
organic gardening, learning French, or summer grilling.
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| Photo #4 |
And then there are
millions of blogs centering more on travel, daily life, or family—not to
mention the millions of other types of blogs. Clearly some of these bloggers
can be just as motivated as their commercial counterparts and although most of
their drive to keep up with their blogging probably comes from deep personal
passions or convictions or desire to share with the world, I’d wager a bet that
at least part of their motivation
comes from the blog counter.
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| Photo #5 |
Lauren
wonders why it matters, why I should be concerned with a graph that
shows whether the
number of readers that month has stayed the same, increased,
or decreased, and by how much. She does pose a good question, and I guess all it really comes
down to is my self-competitive nature, formerly expressed in running, cycling,
Nordic skiing or triathlon races or training sessions.
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| Photo #6 |
I do think I’ve learned
from years of tweaking training schedules and continually trying to improve my
race results (end result being getting injured five years ago and as of yet not
being able to return to any racing or even serious training) and will avoid
coming anywhere near my prior demands for ever better performance.
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| Photo #7 |
With this blog
it’s more of a curiosity. Sure, it’s meant for family, friends and strangers to
take a look at if they want, but another selfish deciding factor was to have a partial record of our year in Lucca and if seventy or seven hundred
people read it this month it’ll still be there for us ( I think… or maybe I’ll
print it out in the end just to be sure) for years to come.
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| Photo #8 (Where and Who is it?) |
The
blog counter says that there is readership out there, although the comments, I
must say, have been few and far between (as in 0.3% of the time someone reads
the blog). That is just fine, but to facilitate part of the advantage of the
blog format, in which reader can participate as well as writer, I challenge you
to participate in this little game today: identify where the pictures I've included in this post were taken (all but one in or right around Lucca), and try to be as specific as possible.
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| Photo #9 |
For those of
you who haven’t been here, there’s always Google Earth Streetview, or Google Images, and maybe I’ll
include a more general game in the future if I get any response this time. In general I think they go from easier to harder. Okay, good luck! (And no, it's not all about the blog counter!)
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| Photo #10 |
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