Friday, November 27, 2015

The Somewhat Backfiring of What's Hot

The What's Hot on the Blog series has a cheesy name but you have liked seeing what's in them.  That part is cool and shows there is good reception for some of the content here.  That's a cool thing ... but ... it's also a problem.

The problem is it marginalizes any articles which don't make the cut and I frequently disagree with the voting but it's not so much resentment.  I'll have written something which I think is a fairly good summation / analysis / etc of something but it doesn't make the cut.  The question isn't so much regarding an ego boost because that's the music and all that philosophy while the writing is something else.

My reaction is a kind of disappointment insofar as I have failed to attract attention to something which I felt was worthy of it.  This isn't a wrist-slashing angst but it's a curiosity, challenge to write better, etc, etc.


A slightly different approach I've started using now is to 'pin' a Tweet such that it appears first when my Twitter profile is displayed @ searchforithaka.  In that way, I can fix a focus on a particular bit which is worthy of your attention.  'Pinning' only supports one Tweet in that way so I can change at will whatever is current.

The Twitticisms are 'backfiring' in the same way insofar as they draw more attention to themselves than any particular article in the blog.  That's turned out to be not so terrible because it motivates me to use Twitter more, in part for the broadcast within Twitter, and that content can be pulled down to the blog so sending Tweets becomes, in effect, another way to write a blog article.

In the above context, I'm resentful with myself for knocking actual articles out of the What's Hot list and I do it with my own code.  There is probably a way to address that but the problem has to bug me enough to make it worth playing with the code.  I did it professionally for decades but now I only do it if I feel like it and that is much, much better.


Note:  sure this is in part to trumpet my Twitter @ searchforithaka and the way I do with Follows is I'll follow you back so long as you're not a bozo, hooker, SEO specialist, Teabilly wastrel, etc, etc.

Twitter has also become important because Safari permits calling up a sidebar with the latest Tweets from any of my Twitter Follows currently active.  That sidebar can be pulled up and disappeared with a button click so quite nice and highly effective.

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