Being good as well as looking good
Friday, October 15th, 2004
My friend David Clark and I have been following a number of discussion threads that have resulted from provocative posts from popular bloggers. Some of these threads have over 50 replies from all over the world (all in English) and there are themes in them that we find interesting and worth discussing.
One of them is one that David as just posted on in his weblog which is about presentation or surface appearance. His take on it is partly driven by the fact that he’s got a disability that makes face to face meetings and phone conversations hard and the filtering of email or online interaction allows his ideas to stand free of the baggage that comes from seeing him in a wheelchair or hearing his voice.
My take on this particular theme is a bit different. Many of the weblogs we read and track are done by professional graphic designers and there is an unspoken theme in threads that your blog better show your chops or your comments have no weight. Generally when one posts a comment there is a link back to one’s weblog or site or email at least and at times I have felt totally ignored because my weblog doesn’t look like it was done by a photoshop fanatic or graphic design pro.
This is the same theme David is tracking. But, there are many more and my current favorite is the popularity effect: if you do not run a popular weblog you must be doing something wrong and therefore your opinion has less weight. Or, the flip side: if you run a weblog that gets a lot of hits, your thoughts are taken more seriously, even if they’re crap (which many are).
My wife calls the pretty but lacking content idea “looking good instead of being good” and there’s a lot of this going around these days. Seems like it’s a scaled up pre-teen “if I just wear the shoes she’s wearing I’ll be popular just like her” idea. It’s amazing to see it at so many levels in so many places.
This is what I’ve been thinking about recently, but not as well articulated as you have here, Richard.
The other thing I have noted on “popular” blogs is they have a LONG list of links to other blogs. They also comment on other blogs so as to get links back to their own.
Increasingly, too, there seems to be an “inside” ring of comments so if you’re an outsider commenting, you pretty much get ignored.
Just my take. Glad I’m not the only one feeling uneasy about the state of the blogging world these days.
I think your take is right. I just commented on an interesting thread here:
Developing Community
I think you’ll find my comment interesting.
I commented, too. Thanks for pointing it to me.
I have to admit being somewhat envious of the graphic skills of the designers of some sites. The “Let’s See Yours Then” forum at Textpattern tends to get lots of these. My own site tends to be more on the “functional” side. It never occurred to me that there’s a popularity idea involved.
A possible counter example. The Textpattern portion of the site gets a huge amount of hits, far surpassing the main site. It has a fairly stark and basic look as well. So I suppose if your content is “good enough”, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. ;-)
Hey, it’s not that I’m not envious, I am but photoshop skill does not equal organizational, writing, photographic, or UI skill. I’ve seen a lot of sites that look great but are devoid of useful content and sites that are chock full of nuggets that (to me) look like hell. I like your site Mark. But then, mine is much the same; stripped down to essentials (as best I can make it) and hopefully relatively easy to use.
As a graphic designer and someone who is disabled I can readily understand your point. If you come to my website and visit my blog you’re going to find it looks like crap!
Then again, I don’t have time to be playing with it and improving it. I’m too busy creating website graphics for my clients. I’d rather be making money than building my blog site into the most popular one on the internet.
Actually, my blog site main purpose is for getting search engine attention. It currently averages about $400 in bi-weekly revenue. During slow times I’ll work on creating new products to sell via my blog. Otherwise it’s pretty much the same.
I’ve discovered that although my blog is ugly quite a few people have inquired about having me create a similar one for their website. Where $800/mo isn’t a lot of money for some people it’s a paycheck for many others. 8)
Anyway, that’s my two cents on this. I don’t see myself as a blog moderator. I see myself as a very profitable graphic designer.
GrafxExtreme.com
Kristy, Are you generating the $400 every two weeks with adwords? If so, that’s wonderful and I congratulate you. If your weblog is generating money and work for you then I’d say you’re doing good and maybe don’t touch the looks, it’s working. The above post was aimed at sites, people, institutions, etc. that spend a lot of time on loooking good but aren’t actually working and aren’t doing good by their customers. Sounds like you’ve got it made.