Community – Ponder Me This
I’m a ponderer and I was hoping you my fabulously intelligent Hipster readers would be interested in pondering with me… My ponderable today is about blogging. As bloggers, what are we looking for? What do we need and what do we want? I think each one of us began to blog for many different reasons. Whether that be for fame and fortune or just somewhere that we can share our thoughts. For me personally, I started blogging for one reason, but fairly quickly, I continued blogging for a much different reason, community.
This blog along with sites like MyBlogLog have given me the opportunity to meet and befriend people that I would of never had the opportunity to meet let alone have fabulous conversations with. It’s been amazing and it’s something that as I get older and hopefully wiser, I have come to realize just how precious this community and these conversations actually are.
Think of what technology has given all of us the opportunity to do. Just yesterday, I was introduced right here on this blog via a comment to an incredibly interesting woman named Ryan who through our conversation we discovered that even though I live in Raleigh and she in Boston, we grew up about a mile from each other. I am using the term “grew up” loosely as I grew up and then she was born as I am considerably older than her. 
Now the reason I am bringing all this all up is that even though blogging is exploding each and every day, I believe that we as a community are dramatically under served. Even with the technology available and a whole lot of players in this market, I still don’t think people truly get that it is not always about subjects or interests, it’s about THE CONTENT and THE PEOPLE! What do I mean by this? There are blogs that focus on subjects that from the outside looking in, I would probably not have any interest in. But for one reason or the other, I took the time to truly read what some of these amazing bloggers are writing and now I cannot get enough of them.
Let me give an example. There is this amazing woman named Jen who writes a couple of different blogs. One is called Goodness Graciousness and the other is The Art of Intimacy. Now just from those titles, what would was your first impression? Mine was Chick Flicks! A place where women talk about love and how their men don’t cuddle with them enough, yada yada, yada… Now just being honest, for me personally, I think I would rather have my teeth removed with a rusty wrench than read this, but as usual I could not of been more wrong. Instead Jen writes these wonderfully personal as well as incredibly interesting articles that read like they came right from her heart and landed directly onto the screen. Content and People…
It’s amazing what we as individuals can do and I believe that when we as individuals can get together in a community, there is no limit to what we could accomplish. Though right now, I feel like there are things that are missing to enable us to do that.
So here is my ponderable that I would like your help with. I want to be able to have a better and stronger community. I want to be able to get better and more specific feedback on what you the reader likes and dislikes. I want to be able to keep track and stay abreast of what you my readers/fellow bloggers are writing about each day with the limited amount of time that I have available. I want an easier way to communicate to you both individually as well as a group.
What do you want? Am I off on my thinking or are there things that you would love to have that would allow your voice to be better heard as well as being able to find and hear other voices easily and quickly? I am asking you to join my ponderable and offer your thoughts. There are no wrong answers in Ponderableland, unless you ask me to vote for you for the Best Blogger Award.
Alright, here we go.. Sit back, take a deep breath, relax and join my ponderable and share your thoughts. Thanks!
Technorati Tags: Hipster, pondering, ponderable, blogging, bloggers, community, MyBlogLog
Related posts:
- Contest: If Wishes Could Be True Ah wishes, I am a big fan of wishes. I wish all the time. I wish when I don’t even...
- Hipster Sharing the Link Love I publish this blog using WordPress and WordPress along with most other blogging software out there automatically puts a “NoFollow”...
- The True Value of Blogging A little over three months ago I launched this weblog. I had been blogging for years, but my blogs were...
- MyBlogLog: My New Rules I am a huge fan of MyBlogLog. I have discovered so many quality blogs as well as met so many...
- Ding Ding – Scoble vs. Calacanis In our on going series, As the Blogosphere Turns, we now turn to the heavyweight division as Robert Scoble and...
For me, it’s all about time. Between my family, my business, my friends and taking care of myself, there isn’t time for much else if I still plan on getting a good nights rest.
These days I literally have time to interact with about 5 blogs. They tend to be blogs of people I know in meat space. I use the online media to keep ties with the people I care about rather than find new people to include in my circle. (clearly, this is one of my 5)
I’m with you in that I am more attracted to cool people than topics. I can learn about a topic with targeted research, I subscribe to people.
Create something that will give me more time to spend getting to know other people and better understanding the people I already do.
Adam – Great thoughts. Though I have a question. How do you want to get to know people? Is that through one on one conversations, their writing, what?
I know you are getting this as an email, but please come onto the site and comment so everyone can read it, thanks.
To be honest. I rarely go out and meet people on my own.
I either have a need or a task and I get a lead from my personal network. Or, someone else’s need is transfered to me. I then reach out or am reached based on that need and a relationship is born. From there, it goes on its own path on and off line.
The only other angle is when cool people just introduce me to other cool people. In most cases, however, it is because they think that one of us can be useful to the other based on their personal knowledge of “us”.
I guess it means that, for me, shared interests aren’t enough.
Knowing what I want to accomplish and finding people to help me along that path would be most useful. For others, knowing what they want to accomplish, and finding me when I can be of assistance is ideal.
That is how I want to meet people.
I had a conversation with a friend a while back that he later posted here – http://archerpelican.typepad.com/tap/2007/03/three_quotes_on.html
I didn’t realize until now that the line of thought on how to build relationships would lead to being THE WAY I would want to meet people.
PS> I can totally see the social media app behind the concept of usefulness and goals.
There are those that skip across many blogs like a rock across the top of the water, and then there are those who chose no more than a handful of blogs to read and respond to, sinking deeper into quality relationships. I for one have been skipping across many blogs every day, taking very little time to consider and respond/share. I can see the benefit to increasing my community with a “less is more” approach to the blog’s I subscribe to.
I am thinking that the way to help increase a person’s sense of community in blogging is to find the blogs you like to read, limit that number to a handful, and take the time to share your insights and perspective. In doing so, people could get to know each other better. Over time, a blogger would get to know their readers and the readers would get to know the blogger. Community.
So instead of “skip, skip skip, skip”, skip over a few and then allow yourself to sink into deeper realtionships.
Scott,
Thanks for your feedback and I agree with your thoughts. I wonder if there is a way that people can quickly go through blogs to find posts that interest them without skipping…
I want to thank you Scott for not skip, skip, skipping past mine. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Hi Cord…
First, thank you so very much for your kind support and encouragment. It means so much to me…. I can’t tell you!
Great questions and thoughts!
I share you quandry.
There are so many fabulous blogs, so much to learn, so many writers who intrigue me, capture my attention, and provide me with a spark of light!
I’m finding it a little hard to keep up with it all… Somedays I just don’t have the time to read more than a handful of blogs, then I feel badly that I am not contributing and recipricating… you know how it goes!
I would love to meet all my cyber friends in real life… now that would be fun! LOL!
Wishing you a great day,
Jen
I’ve only been blogging since February, and I was kind of dragged into it by a close friend, ck. see: http://reichcomm.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/01/waste_of_time_w.html
I had absolutely no expectations one way or another.
But I’ve met some wonderful online friends, some of whom I’ve since met face to face. I’ve been opened up to different viewpoints on business and marketing issues, and writing a blog has helped me look at things a bit more closely and critically.
I’m enjoying it and I only expect it to get better as time goes on.
David Reich my 2 cents