Who comments

This is something that a colleague of mine asked once about blogging – who comments, why don’t more people comment and are you successful without comments when you blog?. Well it seems that the Freakonomics blog is asking the same question, with quite a few comments in reply.

I answered my colleague by saying that the people who comment are usually friends or regular readers. Those readers are regular because the individual writing is a personality of sorts, or there is a very constant topic being explored on the blog. So a blog like mine that is pretty spread out may have a few regular followers, but likely (I’ll put big money on this ;)) not as many as some famous author. The posts also have be of the kind that invite commenting on, especially with the ever increasing amount of noise that is out there online that can tire the reader out leaving them with no mental energy to comment. On the last point, I said that I understand that not many people follow my blog, and that is fine, I know that many people get here by mistake (often looking for BOORA Architects, Lightroom vs Aperture or other stories that I’ve commented on in the news – like Blackboard and recently Disney), stay at the page for less than 10 seconds and then go off somewhere else. But this is not really for them, this is more for me, to allow me to reflect and store my professional refections in a place that I can always get to them. It’s also a way to show those who care, some of my photography. If the rest of the content is useful for others, then it’s all the better.