5 Unpopular (Anti) Social Articles
The first couple of months that I had this site I only had one visitor. Well, only one that I knew of. So many of my articles went unloved and unread.
It’s not that the articles are SO bad. Well, maybe just a little – my writing has definitely improved. It’s just that no one knew they existed. They were out there all alone floating about the Internet.
Since I’ve been highlighting articles from the past, such as 5 WordPress articles and 5 Twitter articles, I decided to showcase 5 unpopular articles. Maybe they will find a little love now.
I should note that my criteria for selecting articles were ones with no comments. It’s entirely possible that they were wildly popular and that the readers were so stunned by my brilliance that they were unable to comment.
- Shared Netvibes Page as Lifestream – When I first started this site I thought one of my main topics was going to be lifestreaming because I’m very interested in it. I wrote a number of articles on the topic but quickly tired of it and there are others, like Mark Krynsky who are covering the topic is a more complete manner. But Netvibes as a shared lifestream? Why? Actually, I just took a look at it and it does show what I’m going online with photos, bookmarking, videos, etc so maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.
- Fav Thumbs – Visualize Your Delicious Bookmarks – This is a review of Fav Thumbs, which is a visual representation of Delicious Bookmarks. It’s pretty cool but I’ve never really used it and it’s slower than just searching the regular ones.
- Time Tube by Dipity – A YouTube Timeline – I’m not sure what else to say about this one – the title basically says what it is. You can create a timeline of YouTube videos with a search, by manually entering them or with a RSS feed. I created one of Mirror’s Edge videos because that is a video game that I have been looking forward to even though I know it will frustrate me to no end. And yes, I know the game is out but the PC version isn’t being released until January.
- Get Invited: 4 Ways to Obtain Access to Beta Sites – I’m really not sure why I even wrote articles back them – the titles provided plenty of information. For awhile last summer I was into trying out new sites so I wanted to get beta invites. I’m not so interested anymore – I’m overloaded on sites to test and really don’t have the time.
- Wordle – Generate Word Clouds from Text, RSS, and del.icio.us This online utility allows you to generate a word cloud based on bookmark tags, an RSS feed or input text, such as lyrics to a song.
There you go. My 5 crappiest articles or perhaps my 5 articles that left all potential commenters speechless.
photo credit: kevindooley
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December 18, 2008 at 6:44 am
Kim:
I couldn’t resist the beta post. I am a sucker for new, new, new or first, first, first. And No, with over 20 years on the internet I still haven’t learned my lesson!
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December 18, 2008 at 7:48 am
Your writing has definitely improved by time :) It was a nice trip back on memory lane…
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December 18, 2008 at 8:01 am
@Dee – You have an adventurous spirit ;-)
@Stratos – Thanks! I think it has too – I’ve been slowly learning how to be more confident with my writing and to sound like myself.
December 18, 2008 at 10:50 am
Kim, I enjoy your writing. You definitly write as if you are speaking and I note a distinct sardonic tone. I will, when I have time, peruse your site more thouroghly. I must say your opening offering made me laugh, and I always enjoy a good laugh. I look forward to your other offerings. Hoping you are well. Jon
December 18, 2008 at 10:52 am
Kim,
It’s weird. I did a post back in Oct that garnered all of 2 comments. To date it’s had over 12000 page views. I figure, “Hey, I musta nailed THAT one. No one is even daring to comment!” Hehe, yeah, right.
Very cool to put these out there. Hey, maybe we could do a “worst of” blog carnival or something! I could just my my WP posted file right on over…
George
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December 18, 2008 at 11:55 am
Yeh, I’ve always wanted people to read some of my older articles which – like you with your articles – I’ve found to be quite exceptional, but were underappreciated. lol. Maybe I’ll do my own kind of article remix.
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December 18, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I love your blog. Its so hard to find tech related blogs that don’t make you feel like an idiot. :) Most of my early posts didn’t generate much traffic either, but I guess that’s the nature of blogging.
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December 18, 2008 at 1:37 pm
“It’s entirely possible that they were wildly popular and that the readers were so stunned by my brilliance that they were unable to comment.”
Haha being a new blogger is tough.
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December 18, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I have many articles from the early days of my blog that I’d like people to see. I have recast and resurrected some of them as new posts. Maybe a better way is to do a post like this drawing attention to them. And some of those early posts are best left in oblivion!
Your writing keeps improving post by post. As I hope most of us can say!
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December 18, 2008 at 2:44 pm
@Jonathan – Thank you for visiting and commenting. And thank you so much for the compliments – I really appreciate it. I don’t always write in that style but as I’ve been getting better at writing in my own voice my natural sarcastic, self deprecating ways are coming through.
@George – I have an old post about how to strip the audio from youtube videos. I wanted to do it to get funny soundbites like Bill O’Reilly saying “Eff it, I’ll do it live”. But I guess people are super cheap and are getting the songs from music videos – I can’t imagine it’s good quality. Anyway, that article gets more traffic than anything I’ve written but has only had a couple of comments. I suppose I need to write about stealing music to get more visitors who don’t say anything ;-)
@Shirley – You should definitely do it. I really like your articles although I haven’t yet gone through your archives.
@Carla – Thank you! Since I’m kind of an idiot, it would be hard for me to talk to others like they were ;-)
@Vered – Thank goodness I had my friend Jim. He would read my article everyday so I knew that someone was.
@Mike – Thank you! I think the better I become at writing like I speak the more people seem to like the articles. I definitely think you should do something similar with your older articles.
December 19, 2008 at 4:36 am
Hi Kim – I remember having lots of those days with no comments. I don’t know what kept me writing, but I did. I pretended I had an imaginary audience. One day they finally showed up.
I actually like Wordle. There’s not much you can do with the data, but it’s fun to play with.
Barbara Swafford – Blogging Without A Blog´s last blog post – Twitter – Social Media’s Hidden Gem
December 19, 2008 at 7:03 am
i’ve written some pretty “crappy” stuff in the past, but you know what, i think it has made me write better. had i not written crap in the past, i would have nothing to improve upon.
it’s nice to look back and see improvement, so dont think of it as inferior, but as a stepping stone. it served a purpose back then.
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December 19, 2008 at 7:06 am
and no i didn’t have any comments, but kept doing it. i tried to get my friends to add their two cents. i’m still working on that.
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December 19, 2008 at 11:36 am
@Barbara – I was trying to remember what my motivation was and I really don’t know why I kept going – I needed a distraction but otherwise there was no real reason to keep writing.
@Natural – I can’t believe you didn’t have comments :-) And it’s great to see an improvement in the writing!
December 20, 2008 at 1:42 am
My favorite posts are usually the least popular. I don’t understand it.
Would you please write an article about how to enable comments on “about” and “contact” pages in Wordpress? I’ve seen this done before on other blogs.
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December 20, 2008 at 9:09 am
@Wesley – LOL – Maybe you’re just contrary.
Comments are probably not on the template that you are using for those pages. I’ll see if I can do an article about this but I am going to be posting less over the next week or so because I am going away for the holidays.
December 20, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Hi Kim – you always seem to be able to find some great and useful tools online. Isn’t Wordle brilliant? I could mess around on it forever.
December 21, 2008 at 7:47 am
@Cath – Wordle is a lot of fun. I should try it again with my RSS feed because I’m sure the main words have changed.
December 22, 2008 at 10:19 pm
What a neat way of bring back “the dead” to life! I recently rejuvenated and rewrote one of my “unread and unloved” articles from the old archive. What was once a comment-less article has just hit a 30-mark since then. I’d not rule out the possibility of doing again in the near future.
Yan
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December 23, 2008 at 7:36 am
@Yan – Thank you for visiting and commenting!
Rewriting an old “unloved” article is a really good idea. :-)
December 23, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Kim, I am going to go through your earlier archives. I always seem to find something useful in these posts. Wordle seems like a very good service.
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December 23, 2008 at 10:05 pm
@Madhur – Thanks! Wordle can be useful in analyzing the keywords used by a site.
January 20, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Great way to revive great articles that were just overlooked, and to showcase previous writing to new readers. Kudos!
~ Kristi
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January 20, 2009 at 8:47 pm
@Kristi – Thanks! It’s also useful when you don’t know what to write. Just recycle some old material that no one read the first time.