It’s exciting to set up a blog.
That first post or two can be nerve racking.
Comments can encourage, stimulate, irritate and challenge.
The technical learning curve is different for all of us.
What about hits?
I like blogs that have a hit counter open to others.
However, it merely gives me a very rough idea of what is going on.
The same is true with my logs. I can’t accurately measure a lot of things.
As Cre8d wisely says in this post about our web statistics:
How does this all relate to blogs? Blogs are a special type of website in which the majority of the action takes place on the front page. Think about your surfing behaviour when it comes to blogs. I would argue that many visitors would check the main blog page to see if there are any new articles, read any that interest you and then surf on to another blog. All these visits could not be included in the average visit length calculations. Perhaps you may click and leave a comment and unless the commenting facility was run on your server, you’d have no idea how long their visits were either!
It’s meaningless to compare different websites’ visitor length statistics. Visit lengths are incomplete (biased) data, and to compare different websites, you’re making the huge assumption that the unknown visit lengths (most likely a significant proportion of visits) are distributed in the same way, irrespective of the blog!
This post breaks the technical into english and helps us understand how to look at what does count.
Blog Design
The LivingRoom took time to find blog designers, people that have the technical skills most of us don’t.
Newspapers pay a lot of attention to their front page.
Our blogs are our ‘front page’.
If you need a tweak, head over and see who knows how to work on blog platforms, improve the look and tidy the technical.
Language
65% of communication on the internet is in English.
50% of Americans have now been online.
In Canada, 100 languages are spoken. I speak only one of them.
Where am I going with this?
Over to BuzzMachine who looks at international connections.
The technical barriers aside, we miss out on connecting, particularly with the Church. There are people working to break down the online language barriers.
My opinion about Americanization is simple.
Since the events of 2001, I’ve seen the blogosphere grow rapidly.
And I’ve seen many US citizens turn their gaze outward.
Those of us outside the US can encourage them to do so.
We can handle our discourse with respect, understanding how they filter their world view. Some are more interested in reaching out than others, and it’s great to have a blog and be there to say hi when they stop by.
Canadian Jihadis
The successful recruitment of Canadians into the jihad raises a troubling question for Canada: What is it that makes a middle-class teenager from Scarborough or Montreal give up everything and go halfway around the world to wage religious violence?
This National Post article looks at Canadians who leave the west to participate in terrorism, or return to continue it here.
Published 4 years, 10 months ago“In Canada, over 17% of the population is foreign born, making Canada more vulnerable to these tendencies than are other developed nations,” says the April 30, 2003, report, released under the Access to Information Act. “By contrast, only 9% of the U.S. population is foreign born.”
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For blog design, Wordpress or MovableType coding or blog consulting, see cre8d design.
On language: I was once quite fluent in French, and I can still read and understand it. Were I to be dropped into a French speaking area, I would probably be OK within a couple of weeks. I speak and read Spanish with a vocabulary limited to my profession and would probably adapt quickly if I were forced to speak it exclusively. I am beginning to understand spoken Portugese.
I think that most North Americans speak only one language because they have never been forced to do otherwise. The schools have stopped trying to teach other languages to the very young, who are actually those who would learn it best and easiest. I am in favor of true bilingual education for all - especially for those who speak the dominant language.
On another note - I wonder if there is a increased percentage of bloggers (over the general population) who have lived in other countries. I lived overseas from ages 3 to 6 and 10 to 11 - and I know that it has profoundly affected the way I look at world events.
Alicia:
I agree that more than one language and travel seems to help.
As I’m going through blogs and blogrolls I find that people such as yourself(lived in another country, learned another language) see things differently.
I was taught French since grade school, but I don’t speak it. We have two official languages on the federal and at least one provincial level and it hasn’t been that successful on a practical level. Perhaps what it has done is help break down some of the previous generational mistrust and intolerance between Canadians. Blog on!