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A blog is like a garden

Matthew Hurst at Data_Mining coins my latest favourite blogging similie of the month while bemoaning the problems with Google and Feedburner which has seen:

While this issue is personally frustrating (a blog is like a garden you are nurturing but for which you can only watch through a telescope – now you find that the telescope isn’t working!)….

I completely agree. I’d often thought about this as my wife is a keen (when she ccan get out there) gardener and I’ve noticed parallels in the two pastimes: lots of tinkering, tending, regular big pushes of activity and delight in the aggregate results for all your efforts.

: : On the Feedburner issue, I’m glad it’s not just me with subscriber figures in turmoil. The service showed a freefall in my subscriber numbers over the past week – I thought I’d simply offended a huge amount of people with my thoughts about Digg :-)

It is worrying that there can be this much turbulence in the data though, especially as Feedburner is going to be used increasingly in corporate work. As Matthew points out: “it points to a larger problem with the blogosphere: there are no market pressures to make monitoring of this type accountable.”

 

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Antony Mayfield

4 responses to “A blog is like a garden”

  1. Nicola Avatar
    Nicola

    Like the similie. I like the thought that ‘a blog is like a garden’. We actually used something quite similar in a presenation recently, though it was more about brands who want to build online communities. Like a garden, it takes lots of time and effort to make a community grow.

  2. David Brain Avatar
    David Brain

    Thank god. Me too. 10% drop in the last few days according to Feedburner. I had no idea it was “them” and not “me”. Ever wonder about how much you actually DO follow the slow upward tick of these numbers? Very sad.

  3. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Nicola: yep – it definitely works like thata – love it. I think i lot of brands are dealing with over-grown scrub-land that they need to clear and examine before they start trying to get plants to grow :-)

    David: it all speaks to our brains’ reward-systems. In a sense, I think one becomes literally addicted to them ;-)

  4. Amelia Avatar
    Amelia

    Not just blogs. We have been talking to clients about communities on Social Networking sites being like gardens – taking time, energy, effort (love?) to make things grow. Every client wants a “MySpace” presence, without realising that they have to understand what their role is and that you can’t just expect that you rock up and everyone wants to be your new friend!

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