Thursday, December 27, 2007

Random Thoughts In No Meaningful Order

Image of A Social Network. Think of the button labeled as an individual as an individual website or blog. (Thought Experiment).


Today, I am at the library again. I had three books waiting for me this morning, Ekaterina Sedia, The Secret History of Moscow, Ron Pernick, The Clean Tech Revolution, and David Sandalow, Freedom From Oil.

I check out my books every time. This is to increase circulation of books. The more circulation or items checked out, the more likely that the library will get additional federal, state, and city funding. The government wants you to use the library. I want you to use the library. Be literate, read.

I handed over my plastic library card to the clerk and she zapped the books with the scanner. Then there was that clicking sound you hear of the printer spitting out the receipt with the due dates for the books. For me, it is a wonderful sound.

Now, I have something to read and review for your enjoyment.

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I spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to promote this blog. I have tried entrecard, blogcatalog, and fuelmyblog. I have even asked people to exchange links. I do look at a lot of different peoples blogs to see who is doing a very good job.

It takes quite a bit of time to do this. I've found the best way to find good blog sites is not to search for them by using search engines. Search engines do not find social networks. I find a blog which I like in a particular category like books or writing, then I check the links which lead away from the blog. I do spend time looking at a lot of different peoples sites. When one person has a lot of links to their site, I consider it a hub or central point to look for other sites. These are the best places to find the good sites.

Like sites attract like quality. So a high quality hub site is what I am looking for when I am looking at blogs. A place with very good writing or recommendations of books is my ideal blog find. If it has a lot of high quality links that is a very good sign. Huge numbers of links are unimpressive, they just create clutter. In the case of friends like in blogcatalog, the ideal number of friends I'd say is about 100-200 with very high selectivity.

I am also looking for people who are part of multiple communities. People who are members of lets say three directory sites, or have membership in a couple different blog rings. These connections form webs kind of like a spider, with one hub leading to the center of the next hub. However, if you think of it, it is more like a ball with links spreading out from each separate center.

Anyways, these are my thoughts for the moment.

2 comments:

Pam Hoffman said...

I'm starting a new blog and I just took a 'class' about it since I'm making it in WP which just seemed so totally daunting initially.

That is why I started my first 'real' blog in blogger. It was a little more easily accessible.

Anywho.

I really love books. The new blog is about books and reading and I'll definitely mention Book Calendar once it gets some steam going.

I have so many things to do!

Until next time,

Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com

Book Calendar said...

Thanks for giving me a boost. I chose blogger because it was the biggest most straightforward of the blog sites.