Comments on: We’re so not vain: only slightly more than one third of us said this blog is about us

By: JS

JS — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:14:01 +0000

Matt — some posts I write expecting to get comments, but most, I don’t. But comments are only part of the conversation. There are the emails I get, contacts from other social software, and being part of the larger, if indirect, conversations happening on the web — other bloggers linking to my posts, or bookmarking them in del.icio.us, or getting referrals from Technorati or Google searches.

Sure, blogging can be soapbox or a public diary, but it can be all different kinds of conversation, or something else entirely. Blogging engines make web publishing and interaction remarkably easy, and what we make of that technology is up to us — so not suprisingly, we won’t all make the same thing.

By: Matt Hart

Matt Hart — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 21:18:36 +0000

I don’t think blogging is about conversation – do you write posts so that you can get comments and respond to them? Blogging is more like monologueing (sp?). It’s a soapbox. A public diary.

By: kathyp

kathyp — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 17:02:38 +0000

* Yes, I publish under a creative commons license because I have had things (photos) taken without my permission in the past, and there isn’t another option until the copyright laws are fixed.

*Everyone close to me knows I have a site. It’s better if your family/boss/coworkers know in advance, rather than finding out themselves. (Of course, you give up some freedom that way.)

*Clear

*No. Never will. (I do link to my Flckr page, though.)

*Cell phone.

By: JS

JS — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:36:28 +0000

I was hoping you’d comment, given your expertise. (I also wondered how you’d answer the questions, so thanks!)

By: Katxena

Katxena — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:47:54 +0000

To follow-up — there is no real problem with the methodology used in the survey, or the small number of blogging respondents, assuming that the survey was conducted according to the methods described, it should be representative. If you have representativeness, a small sample or subgroup is not really a problem.

That said, response rates in the survey industry are down across the board, and I suspect that bloggers are LESS likely than non-bloggers to hang up on telephone surveys (I have no data, it’s just my gut instinct — most bloggers I know personally hate phone interactions). It’s particularly bad when you have this kind of subgroup variation in response rates if the difference is in the very group you are trying to study! There are statistical fixes for the broad problem with response rates, but not for specific problems like blogger/non-blogger differences in response rates — this is what would make the survey unrepresentative.

So, I guess that’s my extremely long-winded way of saying: I agree, the results of this survey probably don’t reflect bloggers as a group.

By: Katxena

Katxena — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:41:26 +0000

No, because I would prefer than copyright laws be fixed.
I don’t know. I don’t share it with co-workers though.
Fuzzy. No
No and no.
Cell phone #. No question.