30th Apr 2003
Context, Blogs, and Chameleons
My perspective on blogs and blogging is probably different than that
of many people. I spent so many years (going back 15+ years) in email
and newsgroups, I had a feel for writing for a specific audience.
For whatever reason, I simply didn’t get into blogging until
very recently. The idea of “Chameleon Blog, presentation
based on who’s visiting” appeals to me. I don’t have the answer
of how to go about it though (but let me know your thoughts, just
the same)
When you send email, to a person or a list, you usually have
a good feel for your audience.
When you make a Usenet posting, it is in a focused area, such as
rec.autos.sport.f1.
When you are on IRC, the channel represents some sort of focus.
(psst! buddy, you’ve made your point, let’s move on…)
So… when you blog, who is the audience? Anyone that clicks
your way. Do you know who they are? No. Can a blog become
a chameleon of sorts, featuring topics/categories differently, based
on the context of who is visiting?
Let’s assume for a moment that I am a well-rounded person, and that
I like to write about some serious tech stuff, and light-hearted
things that happen in the course of a day, and add a dash of
political and social musings here and there. I have things
to say about English Premier League Soccer, and Formula One Racing.
I’m chomping at the bit to tell you what I think of certain books, films,
and music.
At any particular moment, I am bound to lose a big chunk of potential
readers, depending on the topics I am currently writing about.
Hmmm, that doesn’t seem good. If I am trying to find a job or a
contract (which I am), I would want to have my more technically
oriented material front and center. If my Mother in law comes to
visit my page, I probably want my political/social posts, along with
some of my light-hearted musings, to be the thing that gets featured.
For other groups, they might be familiar with the high performance
driving school, F1 racing fan side of me. Finally, I want to be able
to write some things here and there that are in the vein of “Comedy,
but not for Kids”.
So that’s a few different audiences, and there can be lots of overlap.
Does one start a few different blogs, and hope to guide some readers
one way, and some another? I’m thinking not.
I thought about having a more “Corporate, we’re damn serious here, we
talk tech, we never smile, we’re hard driving an unwired course into
our fiscal future” blog. You know, something to appeal to hard-boiled
executives that want everything serious – “Scooter! Was that a smile?!
You’re out the door! Guards!”
In real life, you wouldn’t wear a swimsuit to a formal wedding. You wouldn’t go river rafting in a Tux. You are looser around your friends on a Saturday night, than in a Serious Work Discussion. Context context context.
Having separate blogs just seems like a housekeeping headache. Let’s
say I write about GPS position streaming from individual F1 cars
in a real-world race, so that the coordinates can be fed into a realtime
“drive along” game (an idea that a friend and I wrote about a few
years ago: PrixCast). Is it a tech article? Yes. Does it appeal
to my driving friends? Yes. Would Aunt Bessie in Kansas care?
No.
So my conclusion is: I don’t know what to do! I suppose I could
have some checkboxes somewhere on my page – “feature WebTech,
Ideas, and Political, and make me dig for anything else”
In the meantime, I will continue to write about pretty much
the spectrum of things that interest me. I suppose that could
be not so great for those with a “one blog, one subject” mentality.
What do others do? Are there things that you have done in setting up
your blog so that some topics are more prominent for some users,
and not so obvious for others? I’m not interested in hiding anything.
It’s more of a “featuring certain topics, based on context” thought.
