The Quality-Quantity Content Divide

Although this blog was originally supposed to update five days a week, monday to friday, anyone who has been paying any attention (or anyone who glances at the archive) could tell you that it has not. Which is ok, because I never officially said it anywhere, so it's not like I was missing official deadlines, just personal goals. Which may be as bad, or worse, but that's another issue entirely. Thing is, after missing about a weeks worth of updates, I updated twice in one day. Which seemed a little like a system overload.

Anyways, this whole fiasco got me thinking about how people consume media online; how people watch serialized videos, read comics, or read blogs. My first impression is that people tend to have short attention spans online. I know I'll rapidly flip through Penny Arcade, Sam and Fuzzy and Zero Punctuation on you average wednesday, consuming the media morsels on offer, then moving on, spending maybe 5-10 minutes per site (Tycho's news post requiring a more than average amount of attention).

So if I run with the short attention span assumption how am I, as a blogger, supposed to keep you, my loyal reader(s), interested. I'm beginning to think there's a sort of fine line between too much content and not enough content. One update a day lets you know I'm still here, gives you something to do instead of actually accomplishing something, but isn't going to leave you feeling left behind.

I wonder though, if someone were to stumble across this website, would they look at the overwhelming volume of text and decide that there was too much content, not enough of it good? My intention here is not to make you feel like you're working. I want you to think - maybe engage in a little meaningful dialogue when you feel like you've got something to say - but I don't want this to be work. This is supposed to be what you do to avoid doing work. I know that's why I'm here.

Then again, does any of that really matter? A lot of this is just an excercise in writing for myself, and although I, like everyone with a website, derive some measure of self-worth (self-importance?) from the number of hits my blog gets, it's not for you. It's for me.

So here's to me hoping I'm not giving you too much crap to wade through, but telling you that for all my wonderings, I'm not going to change a damn thing.

Although sometimes I really do wish I could pick the brains of my visitors.