How I read blogs: snacking, dining and scanning

Grandma in GrizedaleI tend to read blogs in three ways.

It’s not something I have consciously built up, it just seems to be the way I have gone.

I’ve also noticed myself subconsciously rating a whole blog in a similar way:

  • Snacking: some blogs tend to be written as small chunks and I like to consume them that way.
  • Dining: some blogs write longer posts these can be really good dining and require time and attention to enjoy them.
  • Scanning: there are a set of blogs on which I neither snack nor dine, I just scan. It’s rare that I eat anything at all, I just look and see, the headline is enough.

I’ve also noticed that when blogs that I regard as a snack produce items that are longer than a snack they tend to get scanned. Blogs that get scanned are the ones that I’m likely to delete from my reader, because scanning is of limited value.

Some example of what I mean for different blogs:

Blog  

Snack Rating

Dining Rating

Scanning Rating

apophenia

2

*8*

0

BetaNews

*8*

0

2

Dilbert

*10*

0

0

Endgadget30*7*

Flickr Lake District Pool

1

0

*9*

Presentation Zen

2

*7*

1

ReadWriteWeb

1

0

*9*

SharePoint Magazine

2

*7*

1

Steve Clayton

*9*

1

0

A reader is, of course, essential to this type of working.

The question this leaves me is this:

How do people relate to my blog?

Am I a snack?

Am I a dinner?

Or am I a scan?


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