Famo

I thought this article from Time. com was pretty cool — Googling For Your Grade.

For both Wilkinson and his students, the “Internet Famous” course marks something of an educational, and technological, experiment. In essence, they are attempting to quantify fame on the Internet by developing a matrix that simultaneously measures the number of eyeballs, the amount of attention, the caliber of the social network, and a variety of other factors. The goal of it all? To help students learn how to use, and even manipulate, the new set of rules guiding online commerce.

Reading about this made me think about my own blogging and lack of “famo” or Internet notoriety. I started this blog mostly to keep friends and family updated, and my readership has varied over time. I hit a high of nearly half a million pageviews one summer, when I posted a rather boring post about a trip to Portland and put this “handsome man” picture up. That was pure accident; we used to do the “I am a handsome man” routine from SNL as teens, and Steve’s expression looked just like that, so that’s what I named the picture (handsomeman.jpg). Since Google still struggles to index photographs, a popular radio station Googled “handsome man” and Steve’s photo came up as number one. Suddenly, I was inundated with traffic.

This blog is still something of an experiment; I’ve never kept to one topic, as all the books say you should, although I set up a different blog for politics and finance after a while (I don’t link to the finance blog, as it is anonymous). My readership plummeted when I did paid posts, although I made more money overall; I am occasionally surprised at who reads my blog (my in-laws) and who doesn’t (my parents and siblings).

I was surprised and slightly bitter when I discovered that my husband’s blog, Critical Moss was more widely read than my own. Not only does he hardly post to it, but I’ve had this blog for at least 2 years longer. I will admit that his posts are shorter and more humorous than mine, which probably makes for a better read online. Perhaps he’s the real author of the family.

It would be great if more people read my blog, but terrifying at the same time. Kind of hard to explain, really, but with recognition comes a kind of expectation of greatness, and some days…I just like writing about my own boring life, without worrying what a disappointment I am to my readers.