When does a blog start getting annoying to read? How many posts can be too many posts? I know of at least a few bloggers (including myself) that post regularly throughout the day. Some of these posts are lengthy and more involved, while others are small links with a little explanation of the link.
Some of the very prolific posters (that come to mind right away) include:
Some of the people that post infrequently include:
And yet, there are some others that make it a point (or so it seems) to post once a day, everyday
Now, it is very difficult to draw any strong conclusion from this information because almost every one of the blogs listed above are top notch and have their own place in the blogosphere. Dave blogs a lot. Period. He blogs a lot, provides useful content in almost every post and is quite out of the ordinary (meaning, does not fall into any of the groups in terms of post quality/quantity comparisons)
Scoble (and almost everyone in group 1) blogs a lot, but his content is mostly short and commentary rather than being exploratory and long winded (of course, he proves me wrong with the last few posts he has had). Photomatt (I myself included, among many others) posts quite frequently and provides a lot of smaller but useful resources and insights everyday. Every couple of days, inspiration hits for a more involved and time consuming post.
Pilgrim and the others in group 2 vary in their content. Pilgrim is very involved in his posts. He lets the posts linger for a while, adding content with his asides between posts (that might be exascerbated by his other new blog). Others in that group will write as and when inspiration strikes on a variety of topics. These blogs vary too much to draw any kind of conclusion or make a generalization.
The third group is the most interesting. These blogs are the “best” read once a day. I know I can visit Alex’s blog once a day and know that I have not missed anything important. Well, thats a generalization and that comment will bite me when I turn my back, but you know what I mean. Anne writes very well explained and researched articles that are on the cutting edge and so does Jeremy. Jeremy blogs lengthy articles (mostly) at least once a day. His posts are almost always fun to read and get a lot of attention.
I myself try to moderate between the extremes and have come up with a fairly good schedule for myself. Well, not as much a schedule as a plan. If I see or read something at work that I consider to be even closely interesting in the context of blogging, it goes online. I make it a point to draft topics on which I have an opinion and then tool away at them when I am bored or when inspiration strikes. I try to get a few posts out everyday and a lengthy, useful post every few days. Now, what I would like to know is whether bloggers actually have schedules set for themselves. I know that I am caught by this bug and am a compulsive blogger so my opinions might not count. I would also like to know if people consider limits in their blogging. Is there such a thing as too much bloggage in a day?
To sum up this post in one sentence paragraph, would this blog be less tolerable and less attractive if I had a post every half an hour? What if in order to post every half hour the topics were less important and much less contextual? Are subjective and specialized blogs more attractive (or useful, different question I guess) than generalized blogs?
You probably wouldn’t beleive me, but I was about to ask this question to wordlog readers. One day I made 12 posts, and I was wondering if the reduced number of comments was due to the number and volume of posts. I really don’t know if less is really more. I, personally, prefer more. The more the merrier!
I think it depends a lot. You have to get acostumed to the blogs you read. alt1040.com i read it only once a day, but photomatt and wtc y read them 2 or 3. However, at alt1040 posts are large, and photomatt and you have small posts. I think 5 posts per day is more than enough.
As with everything, I recommend a varied diet. I don’t find that this blog has to many posts. I always read Matt, and I browse through Scobble. My ignore filter usually goes to repeating news (yes, I know, everyone loves the Canon 20D and no-one has tried it because it’s not out yet). Last blog to be removed from my feed reader was Instapundit because they post much and it too often doesn’t concern me at all and they use ALL CAPS much and that hurts my eyes. I had to filter out the font-tags of the M$ blogs and they all became quite readable. I’m quite happy with my current diet and I’ll be sure to remove and add blogs as people post and post about other blogs. 🙂 (I’ve added a few of the ones you mentioned in this post. Thanks 🙂 )
I think one of the big successes of the Blogosphere (concerning its audience-factor, not the “everyone can do it and everyone does it”-factor) is that it’s a bit more static than something like Community forums online, yet still has that tangible community feel.
Having come from a community-forums world, I found the blogosphere to be much more of a nicely doable world to keep track of. Forums can easily absorb half a day to keep up to date with, and when you reflect at the end of the day on what you’ve learned, it’s usually very little (or nothing at all). With the blogosphere, however, the posts are all far less in frequency (on a per-person basis) but much more worthwhile. That makes them far more manageable. Driving it back to a forum-like frequency of posting many times a day (or just 3-4) would, as far as I’m concerned, only reduce the quality and make the blog less interesting and appealing.
Shouldn’t people post just when they have something to say and the rest of the time just sit down and shut up? I think many bloggers post often, because they think ratings is the name of the game, not conversation, not influence and not substance. You cited nine examples and all of them provide consistently superior quality. But it seems to me that most of the overly prolific bloggers serve up to much obvious shovelware.