I've often wondered: do some bloggers have an uncanny knack of drawing more attention to themselves than other bloggers? I know that in the real world, people can often influence others around them with their behaviour, but what of the online world? I've been blogging for too long to pay much heed to topics like 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get More Comments on your blog which frequently crop up on blogging-related online communities. I also know that just being popular is not guaranteed to generate attention and feedback.

In fact, I don't think controversy or deliberate baiting is always successful in bringing about a large readership. I've seen so many bloggers draw only feeble, tepid responses from readers even when they write about contentious issues in a most provocative way. I've also seen some other bloggers need to just put together a few words to generate hundreds of responses by way of comments. You might argue that these bloggers might have already got a dedicated readership, but so have other bloggers who write spicy stuff guaranteed to draw attention. But is commenting on others' blogs a sure way to get comments on one's own blog? Again, I've not seen this to be too effective. There are a few people around who return the courtesy, but most bloggers don't these days. Yet, some very indifferent and anti-social bloggers tend to attract more attention than others who try desperately to be more sociable. Does the topic of discussion have some effect on readership? Sure it does to an extent, but I don't think this correlates well with the comment-to-readership ratio.

The only thing I can say with certainty is that some people tend to have this strange ability to draw attention with the least bit of effort. I don't know how one's personality translates online, but readers tend to pick up emotional cues from the words they read. Communication always has two threads - one the informational thread and the other the more subtle emotional thread. In direct face-to-face communication, one tends to pick up emotional cues from one's senses, but while reading, I think we tend to attribute emotions to certain words, a particular sequence of words or even by the usage of the language. I know this sounds more obvious than it is in reality, but our brain works so quickly that I doubt whether many people actually realize this. Whether deliberately or otherwise, some people seem to use the language in a way that is designed to trigger an immediate response.

Whatever the cause of this strange phenomenon, I have decided to start using more visual elements in some of my posts to enhance the effect of the words. What do you think of my drawing above? Does it add or detract from the tone of this article?

If I analyze my own views over a period of time, I can only find a single common thread to connect my ideas: anti-establishment. Those who've read my blog over any length of time will probably detect this subtle (sometimes not so subtle) trend in my writings.

It's not as though I'm anti-establishment for the sake of being a rebel. But the way I'm made, I have a strong sense of what's right and what's wrong and from what I can perceive, most of the time the "establishment" (whatever that means in a certain context) is more often wrong than right. I just cannot help this feeling. When I say establishment, it can mean an organization, government or more often than not, merely what has been generally accepted by society; even an ideology or a thought process.

This kind of thinking often gets me annoyed easily. Often I cannot just accept something because it's the norm. Many of my blogging friends might have noticed that I sometimes comment critically on their articles. But I don't go out of my way to be rude or unfriendly. It just happens that I disagree. Even then I try my best not to express myself unless I have a strong urge to do so. I even resist this urge on many occasions. This is because I am fully aware that my own views on a particular subject can irritate others as much as their views can irritate me.

More often than not, I just want to mind my own business. I actually don't care much about other people's opinions or views. It's just that at times, something rubs me the wrong way and I feel the need to get my views straight on the topic. So if you ever see a critical comment from me on your blog, you'll know that it's not intended to personally offend.

I've never been a big fan of Orkut-style social networking websites where you create user profiles, add friends and exchange messages. Somehow, I've not got into them. These social network sites, in spite of being so feature-rich and user-friendly are nothing more than glorified online contact lists. Yes, you collect a whole bunch of "friends", but what does that really achieve? A simple e-mail address book is a much better social network tool and much less clunky. After my initial burst with social networks, I've not found anything to draw me back to them. I hardly log into Orkut these days. Even the excitement of discovering my old school mates through such channels has died down. I feel that those sites are nothing more than self-centred networks. Your main focus is your own profile. And everything else centres around you. To me, at least, these self-centred networks don't have a great deal of attraction. My blog does a better job in that case.

Oh, I am aware that you can build discussion forums and communities around these social networking sites, but discussion communities are not unique to social networking. Discussion groups and online forums have existed in a far simpler form long before the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon came into existence.

And then there are the link submission-style (social bookmarking) sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Once again, I'm not a big user of those. Yes, they do help you get a link back but most of these links are worthless from an SEO point of view (unless your article gets to the front-page somehow). It's true that you might get a lot of traffic for a couple of days from such sites. But then again, it does nothing to promote real social interaction. Additionally you are bound by the likes and dislikes of those communities. I generally find that the communities who use social bookmarking are extremely unreceptive to topics other than technology (and to an extent politics). Thus they are useful to you only if you follow their trends and write about their kind of topics. Besides most of the visitors who come to read your website after clicking on such sites never return. Finally, to the best of my knowledge (and from what I've learned from others), the traffic from social bookmarking sites never generate much advertising revenue anyway. It's merely the internet equivalent of 15 minutes of fame.

I know a lot of you will disagree with this. In fact, I have no doubt that most people will have made better use of social networking and social bookmarking tools than I have and see them as very valuable online resources, but then this article is about how I see them. It seems to me that the whole social-networking thing is overhyped. I always follow my own path in this - most of my friends online are people who've been interacting with me regularly by e-mail for years and those who I've come to know over a period of time. I know I'm old fashioned

This one goes into Policy.

Recently, while happening to post a comment on a friend's blog I happened to notice that Blogger.com blogs no longer allow me to identify myself with a URL while commenting. To me (and a lot of other bloggers), posting a comment on a Blogger.com blog has always been like jumping through an obstacle course. And now the final straw: you can no longer leave behind any identifying information while leaving a comment other than a "nickname" if you choose not to log in to your google account.

I don't care about not about getting a link back for posting a comment (a link back from a Blogspot/Blogger comments page is not worth the bytes wasted on it anyway). It's about identifying myself to the blog owner and other commenters. A nickname is just not enough sometimes. I felt that using the URL field is a fair and acceptable way to tell the blog owner (and other commenters) who I am. I know blogs where there are multiple commenters with the same nickname and the best way to publicly identify themselves is by their URL. By denying a URL, Blogger has effectively reduced me to anonymity. I refuse to post anonymous comments as a matter of principle even if the blog owner knows me from my usual nickname. I know for a fact that there are few other bloggers with the nickname "hari" (it's not just a theoritical objection: I've seen instances where another "hari" has posted comments on the same blog where I have).

So I am no longer going to post comments on Blogger blogs any more. If I know you well enough, I can always comment on your articles by e-mail and you can publicize that if you wish. If I don't know you well enough to have your e-mail ID, then you wouldn't really be upset that I haven't commented on your blog now, would you? And more in general, I'm not going to post comments on blogs where I feel ignored and where the blog owners refuse to reciprocate or even reply over a period of time.

My apologies to my regular readers for this rant. But here's your incentive to move away from Blogger hosted blogs (if you still have one). You are not really in control of any of the features at all, are you? You are at the mercy of a third party's privacy policy and I'm sure you would be the first to get annoyed by things like this.

I'm subscribed to around 20 to 30 blogs through Live Bookmarks in Firefox and a few more blogs which I check out occasionally (without being subscribed to them). I don't know if it is the time of the year, but most of these blogs have gone quiet of late. Some haven't received updates in several months now while others have slowed down gradually and come to a standstill. It's not just one or two blogs. Dozens of blogs which were active a few months ago have suddenly experienced a freeze mode.

I cannot find any reasons for this broad trend although I do think that a lot of people start blogging at a frenetic pace and then find that they cannot keep up because they're too busy, lack the motivation to write or simply don't have anything to talk about. I know it's not easy and especially when creative inspiration is at its lowest ebb. I often start writing at random and find that I am writing nonsense, so I click the "delete" button. You won't believe how many articles I've deleted that way. In short it takes a lot of effort just to write something meaningful when you're short of ideas.

Nevertheless, I wanted to break the trend in case you belong to my little piece of the web, so you have something to check out.