Inviting the World into your living room

Anil Dash's article has me thinking about the parameters I want my various blogs to have. Subject is already defined - I have different blogs for different topics, all of which I have some degree of passion about. I hope my passion is evidenced by my 'voice' in each of my blogs.

Who may stumble across my blogs and whether they become regular readers or commentators wasn't something I knew to consider when I set out on this journey. In some ways it wasn't relevant, or I might have considered it. The point, for me, is to make the journey and to experience what blogging is about, plus I have enough ego to want to give my opinions and express my feelings about the things I have a passion for.

I didn't know, until I listened to Anil's presentation, that some bloggers do regularly correspond with those who comment on their blogs, though I did ponder this when I posted about 'blog etiquette' a while ago. I hadn't really thought about that, or about how willing I was to talk to (potentially) the whole World. Equally, the idea of the whole World trudging across my living room carpet is rather horrifying.

I am guessing, though, that the reality is inevitably going to be smaller scale. Certainly if people are going to become regular visitiors they must have an interest in my ramblings, so 'common interest' will act as a filter to start with. Of the people who visit, apparently only around 1 in 8 will actually leave a comment, so that is the next filter.

So far comments have been limited to 'nice site' or waves from face-to-face Friends, so not a lot there to correspond about - filtered by whether a comment is of a nature to require a response.

My final filter will be whether your comment is of sufficient interest to me that I can and will spend the time to respond. Regular commentators who have something of value to me to say and who mind their manners are the most likely to actually make it into the category of people I will correspond with. I will correspond, since I love letter writing, though I am notoriously bad at doing so in a timely fashion and tend to write a lot when I do write.

Having done the chat experience, I also prefer corresponding with real people who I might eventually manage to meet face-to-face, even if that might involve travelling a bit further than to the local shops.