Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Do You Blurk?

I'm not much of a "blurker".

(You know what I'm talking about, right? "Blog Lurkers"... those folks who regularly read a blog but never reveal their identities or presences. They prefer to exist in the shadows, like guardian angels or phantoms of the blogpera.)

For me, blurking never seems to work.

I mean, I'd love to blurk because it just seems so doggone cool.

You're basically a "fly on the wall", reading others' thoughts, trials, experiences and comments without their collective knowledge. You can anonymously be "part of the action", never exposing yourself (in a G-rated way.) Kind of like "Harriet the Spy meets Cyberspace."

Theoretically, this concept tantalizes me. Yet I'm never satisfied with blurking.

Maybe it's my natural extroversion that keeps me from remaining on the sidelines for long. Or perhaps I'm just unwilling to let my brilliant advice and opinions (that's a joke, by the way...) pass without sharing them with others. It could be that I'm just an intrusive blowhard.

Whatever the reason, I've failed at the blurking game. So if I ever visit your site, please know that if I plan on coming back, I'll be making an appearance sooner or later! And if you're a blurker of Recess for Writers, I encourage you to keep popping in. Hopefully, sooner or later you'll feel compelled to step out from behind the curtain... but if you'd like to remain a blurker, that's a-okay, too. I'm just grateful for your blurking support.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting to see who visits your site with a stat counter. I recently had a regular reader de-lurk. Very cool to see that.

I'm just now trying to get a handle on how many readers I have through feed readers. Since those folks don't have to actually visit the site, they are hard to quantify. Now that Feedburner and Blogger cooperate (under Google ownership, I'm sure), you can see some of that traffic.

Jennifer said...

I could never be a blurker; 1)blogs IMO were made for interaction and best when utilized as such. 2) I'm an attention hog. 3) Can I just stop talking... ever...nope.

The Quoibler said...

Jason--I never thought about a stat counter. Hmmmm... that might be something to implement. Thanks for the tip!

Jennifer--I think blogs encourage interaction, too. Interestingly enough, though, I've come across some that have disabled all comment abilities. It's disappointing when you want to just tell the author: Great Job! I mean... I wouldn't blog if I couldn't get feedback, even in the form of constructive criticism.

Anonymous said...

www.statcounter.com is the one I use. It gives you a lot of information for free.

Beth said...

Blurkers don't bother me as much as regular readers who comment on some of your posts and not others. For instance, I have one reader who NEVER comments if I win anything for writing, but comments on all others. It's like they can't say congratulations or something.

I have some blurkers who are ex-friends and that makes sense. If I read them or if I were to read them, I wouldn't say hello. lol

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