I added a new link just a moment ago to David Horowitz’s NewsRealBlog. I read his book Hating Whitey: and Other Progressive Causes years ago, and although I’ve seen him on various talk shows and such, today I happened to find his blog site.
I’ve also added a link to FrontPageMag, which is Horowitz’s website where you can find NewsRealBlog and other good conservative information.
I tend to jump around a lot when blogging. Politics, humor, random thoughts…. anything is fair game. I never know whether an article will bring in readers or not. So I was a little surprised when a tongue-in-cheek piece about the cartoon called “Max and Ruby” turned into my biggest attraction. It’s my most-read article and has generated the most comments. Apparently idiotic cartoons cause a strong reaction in readers.
I’ve been on Facebook for several months now, giving it a try. I skipped Myspace when it was all the rage, mainly because it was painful to look at and seemed to be full of teens. But Facebook seemed to have more structure and less mess, making it at the very least readable.
I wasn’t on Facebook long before I started getting contacted by old classmates from high school. My 20th reunion is coming up and they are using Facebook as a way to locate and keep in touch between now and then. It’s actually working pretty well to keep a group of people in touch. I’m doing the same thing with my family reunion, building a group of “friends” – in this case relatives – by looking for someone I can find and then using their friend list to find other people.
So now I’ve gathered a decent list of “friends”. I log in once in awhile to check what they have to say. I automatically pull my posts on my blog sites into Facebook via RSS so I’ve got a running list of entries for my Facebook friends to read. But guess what? No one, and I mean no one, comments on my articles. Not one of my friends writes any type of article themselves or writes anything with any content. Yes, there are a few things of interest – one girl is using the site as a way to keep all her friends up to date with her pregnancy. But for the most part, my Wall is filled with STUFF. “I’m eating X for breakfast”. “I just took a shower”. “Blah blah blah Mafia Wars”. I’ve got to sift through so much junk to see if there’s anything important stuck in there that I missed.
I guess I expected more. I expected actual conversations about things of importance. There are significant things happening in our world today, and not one of my 33 Facebook friends has anything to say about them. The one time one of their friends make an offhand political comment, I responded, and after a few volleys back and forth, they quit right when it was getting fun.
I’ll probably stick with it for awhile, but I’m very tempted to just email out my regular email addresses and abandon Facebook. If it weren’t for the reunion stuff, I would have ditched it already. It may be a useful tool for some, but for me it’s just another online persona that I have to keep up.
When I first heard about Twitter, I had 2 questions:
1) What is the point? Why should I use it?
2) What would I have to say that other people might find interesting?
I’ve been on Twitter for several months now. I don’t use it much, although I do feed my regular blog posts into Tweets. I have a handful of followers, mainly people I already knew in real life. I haven’t caught on yet to using Twitter much, but for what it’s worth, I haven’t got very far with Facebook yet either.
Anyway, Dr. Melissa Clouthier has a good article called The Five “I’s” to Twitter Success that helps to answer #2. I’m going to try to follow her tips and see how things go. She’s promised another article on the way to answer #1, and I’m waiting anxiously to see her opinion on that one.
Great article by RS McCain lining out why the list of 10 Conservative women are truly to be honored, not maligned. These are classy Conservative women, smart and well-spoken, which is why the left wants to demean them.
6 months ago I wouldn’t have considered even trying to become a blogger. I’ve been in the business of providing Internet services off and on with different companies since 1995, but I’ve always been skeptical about the “latest big thing”. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, blogging – these all seemed like things that would fade quickly like most fads do.
I’m also a generally private person in my normal life. I keep to myself and appreciate neighbors who do the same. A nod or a wave back and forth across the property line has always been sufficient for me.
But here I am. I made the conscious decision that I would drag myself into the heart of the beast, so to speak. I’ve got a fledgling Facebook page, several web sites with blogs to maintain, and a Twitter account. The question now is, what to do with it all? Ultimately, there are 2 reasons to get into these types of things – you either like to socialize or you want to make money. I’m hoping for money, obviously, since you know I don’t like to socialize.
It’s been surprising to find how difficult it is to come up with articles that people want to read. I never seem to have a lack of things to talk about when I’m with a group of like-minded people, and yet when I have to put it on the screen I struggle. I’m very critical of my own writing, so I end up re-writing a lot of things, deleting whole articles that didn’t work out as well as I hoped – you get the idea.
So, I’m always looking for ideas on how to improve. I like to check out other bloggers to see what they are doing that attract my attention. Today I came across a blog I hadn’t visited before – I try to visit at least 2-3 new blogs per day – called Right Wing News. I found a good article by John Hawkins, the site owner, about becoming – or rather how to become – a Conservative Blogger. From what I understand, Right Wing News gets some pretty good traffic, so Hawkins must be doing something right. I suspect it’s the same thing that everyone else says – generate interesting content, be generous with linking to others, and the traffic will come – eventually.
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