Why I Don't Post Here

I know. It's been almost a year. At last, I've made the decision to break the silence, after realizing just how fulfilling my tech blog was, and yet how it did not fulfill my desires to write about non-tech related subjects. I wondered for some time about how to meld the two ventures, and finally I've come to just placing a simple index page at www.jonathantrousdale.com that can lead the user to both.

So, in case you want a more general explanation, I'll give you one. It's fairly technical, so be warned. Simply put, writing for this blog takes too long. There are elements of blogging that make this reason significant. They are:

1. Short posts are good. I'm talking about 200-400 words. This has a little to do with the attention span of the average Internet user, but it has much more to do with something called visibility.
   
   To know what visibility is, think of a TV series. The series is visible if it runs for many years and there are a lot of episodes. The series visible if it is carried on several TV stations, or in several markets. It is more visible if commercials are run for it. It is visible if people like it, and talk about it or write about it.
   
   Now think of a blog. Blogs are more visible if they have many posts. If all posts must be long, the writers are deterred from writing multiple posts. Blogs are more visible if they have lots of links pointing to them from other sites. Blogs are more visible if they have several people commenting and leaving feedback.
   
   And who are blogs more visible to? Most of us want our blogs to be visible to Search Engines. Why? Because this is where average users go to find out about things. Search engines ask several different questions, including:
   
   1. How many pages does a site (or blog) have?
   2. How many links point to a site (or blog)?
   3. What words appears most often on the site's pages?
   4. Do the pages within the site link to each other?
   5. What words to other sites use when linking to this site?
   6. What other sites does this site link to?
   7. How often is new information added to this site?
      
   
   So, basically, it's easier to have more posts if the posts are short. In addition, search engines tend to see pages longer than 500 words as running too long. The main conclusion in all of this is that it's difficult to keep writing with the knowledge that few people are going to read a post.
   
   
2. Blunt Posts Are Good. It's hard to get to the point sometimes, when you also feel the need to define every term and debunk every counter-argument. In writing about philosophy, politics, or culture, ideas are often very big, and may or may not be immediately related to popular life. Here, you run up against the inevitable problem: provided that people do find your material, they will most likely leave within 10 seconds if they don't find something incredibly interesting.
   
   
3. Lots of links are good. It's hard to insert of links to other sites into your writing, especially if you're writing about something that's not particularly relevant to the latest news or technology out there.
   
   

And, now that I'm past my recommended length of 400 words, I will close. Keeping a philosophy blog current is hard work, in my opinion - much harder than keeping up a tech blog. And, admittedly, over the last year I have not been up to it. Here's hoping that the next year will be better.