I blog too much: Well I do, don't I? Too many words, too much content, too many links, too many photos and, most importantly, using up too much of my time. Yesterday's post may have been rather concise, but that's because I'd looked back at the seven posts I'd written over the previous week and noticed that five of them really were rather on the long side... • Trip on a bendy 38 bus - 1400 words • Deep, meaningful commentary on being single - 750 words • In-depth three-day analysis of the Gunpowder Plot - 3750 words altogether These would be good figures if I was writing a college essay, a newspaper article or even a novel. But no, I'm just writing a webpage with an average daily audience of three or four bendy-busfuls, many of whom have arrived here by mistake. Throw in the time it takes to find (and code) scores of weblinks, plus hours of research (which often involves actually going out and visiting somewhere) and this whole blog thing is eating up my life. Is it really worth the effort?
So I thought I'd test out whether I really do blog too much, or not, by comparing myself against 50 of my blogging peers. For the purposes of this in-depth analysis I've selected a semi-random cross-section of 50 other blogs as follows: a)20 blogs from my blogroll: That's the twenty blogs over there on the right. You know, the ones you never click on but you know you probably ought to (unless they're on your blogroll already). They're stars, the lot of them. b)The 10 most recent blogs to link to me: According to my Technorati profile (when I checked it yesterday) the following are the last ten blogs to link to diamond geezer. Which was very kind of them, so I thought I'd repay the favour... Jakartass, screamtoasigh, a fresh start, Dirk, How To Disappear Completely, graculus, World of Chig, Run over by the truth, The Cartoon Blog, Geoff Coupe c)The 10 biggest blogs in the world: Again, this is according to Technorati (ranked by the number of unique sites that have linked to each of them over the last six months). All ten are, of course, insufferably American, but if you're not a geek or a political obsessive then you might appreciate the two I've underlined: •••••••••• d)10 utterly random Blogger blogs: Selected via Blogger's 'Next Blog' link (sample it here) which brings up a different totally random (recently updated) blog each time you on click it. And blimey, you do uncover some random blogs this way! Here are the ten that came up (in four cases receiving their very first link anywhere, hurrah!) and look, not an American in sight... Kitab Al Shifa(Spain), Refúgios(Brazil?), Not Tonight Dear(Australia), Humane Wetenschappen(Belgium), AC on a bike(UK), crazy little thing called life(Dubai), Archmond's Greenroom(S Korea), Galaxia Wrestling(Portugal), Miracle Do Happens(Singapore), i kissed a drunk girl(Australia)
That's my sample of 50 blogs. I analysed them all yesterday (health warning: this may not be how they look today), looking at how much and how often they post, how many links they throw in and how many comments they get (amongst many other things). So, what did I discover? Bear with me - this may take a while.
