OPEN

I’m going to stop blogging about why I blog – I’ve noticed a drift into navel-gazing int he last couple of posts.

But I will give the last word (here, for a while at least) to a brilliant post by Rex Hammock, who hits back at yet another journalist trying apply dot-com economics to prove that social media is a fad – when it’s a different game altogether – as Mr hammock says:

"…I see having a weblog more akin to having a telephone or email than to
launching a major media property, I think it’s a mistake when anyone
attempts to place mass-media business metrics to defining success or
failure of a weblog."

Yep. It’s just about plugging in to the network.

Read the whole post here – and this is his list of 7 recommendations for blogging that I’m happy to speak for me too:

1. Don’t apply mass-media metrics (size of audience) in
measuring the success of your personal or business weblog.

2. Don’t let any Technorati feature — and I’m not referring to a
specific feature as I can’t keep up with them — define your authority or
popularity or pecking order.

3. Set up a blog for the same reasons you have a telephone or
email: You need a means to join in a conversation.

4. Set up a blog so you can easily post messages, photos and
other digital files accessible by anyone on the web — or by only a private
group of people who you allow to access your blog (i.e., your employees or
members of your family).

5. If you run a business, blog because one day, I promise,
you will be glad you have a place to respond when the conversation is about
you.

6. Blog because there are two or three people who actually matter in your life or work, or who share your
passion for a particular topic.

7. Blog because once or twice a day, you see an article or
joke or something that you forward by email to a group of people. (Hint: stop
emailing them, post them to a blog and tell your friends the address of your
blog.)

Except that I do my humour offline only. ;-)