Blog Explosion Observations

Blog Explosion has me addicted to blogging and blog surfing again. I've been a pretty consistent blogger since I started in September of 2002, never really going more than a week between posts, and I've always been steady about reading through my blogroll, but BE has brought some new excitement to hunting down some new sites.



I find myself staying up past my bedtime to earn more credits. Just a few more credits! I work retail so this time of year is NOT the time to lose sleep due to a blogging addiction! There I am, sitting at the keyboard, earning those surfing credits and enjoying the reads I find until the wee hours of the night morning. It's sad really.



I'll be sitting here staring at the monitor saying to myself, after the next few credits earned surfing, I'll get to bed. Then I win 2 mystery credits and I figure I'll try to hold out until the next mystery credit window appears sponteously. So, I continue surfing and reading until my head starts bobbing and my eyes start moving side to side uncontrollably fast.



This brings me to mention some things I've noticed about BE:

• First off, I have blogmarked a few blogs and I appreciate the fact that Blog Explosion led me to find these new blog reads. I like that feature!
  
  
  
  
• I like earning credits for surfing, although I don't know why. In the grand scheme of life, these credits amount to nothing. Then again, everything is a chasing after the wind.
  
  
  
  
• I quickly filled up my "do not view" list though and wish I could add more sites to the list. I think that 25 "do not view" sites is too few. I guess I must be easily offended! Actually, many of the sites I send to the "DNV" list are "commercial" blogging sites. Other sites I send there because they deal with content I couldn't care less about like recipes, sports, gardening, or they are simply offensive to me because of the content.
  
  
  
  
• Oh, and the profanity "filter" doesn't seem to work very well, either that or people aren't necessarily being truthful about their blog content. A few words here and there I can live with, but some of the posts I have come across simply use language I don't want to read or graphics that I find offensive.
  
  
  
  
• I would like to see BE allow me to have more control over the type of sites I encounter while surfing and earning credits. For example, if someone likes recipes and gardening tips, they should be able to indicate a preference and then the "random" surfing could lead you through blogs with that kind of content. I guess having the ability to add more sites to the "DNV" list would also help in this area because it would automatically avoid sites that I didn't want to see, and after awhile, all that would be left would be the sites I find acceptable.
  
  
  
  
• One thing I find most annoying is when I follow a link some blog pointed me to, and it leads away from the page. The BE error pops up to say "Did you try to close the window? If not please report this site to us, Site ID: #### You can also report the site after logging in again. Click report site and report the second site from the top." There is no way to avoid closing the browser window from this point. I even contacted BE about this and the response I received said that at this point they are Javascript limitations that won't allow it. I have trained myself to right click links to open in new window to avoid this problem.
  
  
  
  
• One suggestion to those who list their blog on BE is to have your web addy visibly posted or linked to a button or something so I can snatch the http address. I suggest this because there are times I find a blog and want to bookmark it in my browser or blogroll immediately, but I can't find the actual web address. I know I can do that by going back to my BE blogmarks, but it would be so much simpler if people made their blog addy readily available. You can snatch the web address from the Sister's Weblog button in the left menu. I'm surprised by the number of blogs I can not find an address on! What would you do if you had to call 911? and the police came? and the fire department came? and they couldn't find you because your address isn't visible?
  
  
  
  
• Something else I've noticed...while I'm not big on commenting very often, I have noticed that some blogs really rake in the ratings and the comments, yet other blogs are left virtually untouched. Obviously the controversial posts will gain attention, but I'm talking about blogs in which I can find really no rhyme or reason as to why there is such a feeding frenzy or why there is a commenting drought. I can't seem to find the pattern for blogs that get the action, and blogs that don't. I'm curious...what prompts a person to rate a site? or to comment? or to blogmark it? or to add it to the "do not view" list?
  
  

So, those are just some quick observations about Blog Explosion that I have. Do you have any to add?



Congratulations, if you read this entire post, you have successfully managed to stay here for more than thirty seconds. In fact, depending on the speed of your reading, you probably lasted a good two minutes! You may continue surfing now, or if you so choose, add more BE observations in the comments section of this post.



Thanks for stopping by!