Blogs are so 1990s - can we do better?

[Canibul]

Originally Posted by jalmberg

Gosh, you have such high standards. Mr. Shakespeare would have been humbled.

yeah, really. one piece of music, one book, one poem, why would anyone ever even bother to do a second one of any of that stuff, once it's all been invented.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by Canibul

yeah, really. one piece of music, one book, one poem, why would anyone ever even bother to do a second one of any of that stuff, once it's all been invented.

I hope it is all in gest.

[Canibul]

Originally Posted by Cadence

I hope it is all in gest.

Yeah, Beau.

[David M]

Originally Posted by rwidman

The same can be said about web forums.

Some of us write for family and friends, not for strangers we have never met. It's a bit like long long ago when we would get back from a trip and invite our friends and family over to watch a slide show. The difference is, everybody doesn't have to meet at the same place or time.

Originally Posted by jalmberg

Gosh, you have such high standards. Mr. Shakespeare would have been humbled.

Sorry, that's just been my own personal experience with them. I'm sure there are other that are totally into them. No offense.

[AnchorageGuy]

Our blogs began back around 2008 and were for family and friends to keep up with where we were and what we were doing as well as a sort of journal for us to go back and revisit our experiences. They were eventually found by the pubic thanks to something called Google. Our Beach House blog is closing in on one million visits and there is seldom a place we stop along our cruises that someone doesn't knock on the boat or walk over to us on the dock and say how much they like our blog and follow us. We still do the blog for family and friends, but it's nice to know that others enjoy what we post and find the information useful. So we don't find anything 90's about at least our blog, and we will probably continue for a long, long time. Or at least as long as folks continue to visit. The best thing that I like about it is that it's absolutely free. Chuck

[Canibul]

Originally Posted by AnchorageGuy

Our blogs began back around 2008 and were for family and friends to keep up with where we were and what we were doing as well as a sort of journal for us to go back and revisit our experiences. They were eventually found by the pubic thanks to something called Google. Our Beach House blog is closing in on one million visits and there is seldom a place we stop along our cruises that someone doesn't knock on the boat or walk over to us on the dock and say how much they like our blog and follow us. We still do the blog for family and friends, but it's nice to know that others enjoy what we post and find the information useful. So we don't find anything 90's about at least our blog, and we will probably continue for a long, long time. Or at least as long as folks continue to visit. The best thing that I like about it is that it's absolutely free. Chuck

Very well put, Chuck. Our experiences exactly, except that we haven't actually left here in the boat yet. We, too, started a blog back around 07, at the suggestion of forum members on the then THT power boat/fishing forum. It was an immediate hit with our familes and friend in the US, as suddenly a way to keep track of where we were and what we were doing.

And now we're also quickly approaching a million page views, and people walk up to us in the hardware store, or on the dock, and say similar things to what you're hearing. I've been working on the boat, and have complete strangers walk down the dock, smile, say they really enjoyed the blog, to keep it up, and we chat for a moment and they leave. We've probably met at least 50 people face to face as a result of strangers finding the blog while researching the Turks and Caicos. And I couldn't even estimate the number of email exchanges I have had with strangers who wrote us because of it. It would certainly be in the hundreds, and probably thousands by now. I'm expecting that to increase, if anything, when we get this boat away from the dock and really start some cruising. We have no scantily clad women. I'm not some professional photographer or writer, and yeah, the subject matter of people moving to islands has been well covered before. For centuries.

I've kept it G rated. I stay away from politics and religion. I try to make it about our experiences and what we see, and not so much about us. I know of at least one entire class of seventh grade science students who have been reading about the Kite Aerial Photography. Their teacher met us on Pine Cay, and put them on to it, and it's now a class project.

I think that's pretty dang cool. I just taught 30 kids I never met how to take aerial photos with a kite. And as long as people want to read a blog about what we're doing, I'll probably keep writing it. For friends I know, and for those friends I just haven't met yet.

[Tessellate]

Originally Posted by rwidman

For me, the problem with "blogs" is that they read backwards. That is, the latest day is at the top, the beginning of the adventure is at the bottom. So to read about an adventure you go to the bottom, read down, then go up one entry and read down etc. It's difficult and confusing. Fine for someone following along day to day, not for someone trying to read about and adventure months or years later.

Good point. I often want to read from the start too, but some blogs don't have good navigation capabilities. It'd be really nice for a blog to have a storybook option where everything is presented from the beginning.

Another thing I look for are the honest stories about mistakes that some bloggers bravely tell for the world to read. It's really easy to write about "another day in paradise" and how awesome your life is going, but that gets old quickly - it's approximately the same reading that story on every other blog. I like reading about the mistakes because I can learn from them, and it helps understand the writers as people. If there are no trials and tribulations in writing, then there's no drama.

[rwidman]

Originally Posted by Tessellate

Good point. I often want to read from the start too, but some blogs don't have good navigation capabilities. It'd be really nice for a blog to have a storybook option where everything is presented from the beginning.

Another thing I look for are the honest stories about mistakes that some bloggers bravely tell for the world to read. It's really easy to write about "another day in paradise" and how awesome your life is going, but that gets old quickly - it's approximately the same reading that story on every other blog. I like reading about the mistakes because I can learn from them, and it helps understand the writers as people. If there are no trials and tribulations in writing, then there's no drama.

Here is our Spring/Summer cruise. There are a few "mistakes" described.

http://www.widman.biz/indigo/HIGH_COTTON_IV.pdf

This is a couple years ago:

http://www.widman.biz/indigo/HIGH_COTTON.pdf