Earthling

Jeff has been a professional writer for many years. Around the time that I started Earthling I think I helped convince him that doing his recreational writing as a "blog" would have some added benefits and wouldn't be much different than the way he had been doing it, through static essays. Shortly after he got Sophistry.org converted into a blog-first format, he also joined the beta test of new blogging platform Vox.com. Both seem to have stuck.

You have two blogs, www.sophistry.org, which you run on WordPress on your own virtual host account, and Durlando, which is part of Vox.com. Tell me a little bit about each of them.

I've owned sophistry.org for a long time, but had let the site get very stale, with just my resume and a few clips. That doesn't seem too exciting for a person who does a lot of Web-related work, so I decided to turn it into a blog. Though it's not intended as a set of writing samples, it is a sort of semi-professional blog in that I often discuss topics that have to do with my professional life -- writing, usability, the Web in general. I tend to stay away from posts that are just the link of the moment, or anything really about my personal life. I like to think that I put a fair amount of thought into most of my posts there, because I also see it as a way to keep up my writing skills.

I started my Vox blog on a lark--the service looked cool and I wanted to see how it work. As it's turned out, it's a place for me to write about things that don't work for Sophistry for whatever reason-- just whatever trivial thing that pops into my head. It's also turned out to be a good way to interact with my friends who use that service.

How has the reader interaction differed between the two?

Well, I haven't had many comments from readers on Sophistry, but those that I have received have been of high quality. It's nice to get a reply from the author of an article you mention, even if the mention is not complimentary and about a trivial matter. I'd like there to be more reader interaction on that site, but it seems that most readers are content just to visit. A factor there may be that the posts are fairly long and often might not work as a starting point for a conversation. For some reason I get more emails from readers on that site, I'm not sure why.

On the other hand, Vox is designed for interaction and seems to work very well in that sense. Vox users have a "neighborhood" of people they're linked to, and it's easy to check up on your neighbors--your own page displays the date of their last post. So I've gotten responses quite regularly there, but they're more chatty. I have no problem with that--Vox seems to encourage a friendly atmosphere where people feel free just to say hi.

What's your favorite comment exchange on either so far? Please be specific.

Unfortunately neither blog has had much in the way of exchanges, but (as I mentioned)I was delighted to see the author of a New York Times Magazine article respond to a nitpicky post I did about it on sophistry.org. Sophistry feels more like a broadcast, where I'm just putting my opinions out there in the form of these mini-essays. Anyone could stumble upon it and hopefully find something interesting there that they might want to talk about. On the other hand, Vox feels like an integrated conversation, which is great, but also more closed. It encourages my friends and I to have ongoing interactions across posts and in the photo, video, or audio sections. It's a conversation with a lot of smaller, disparate pieces. However, that also means that people outside of my immediate circle are less likely to participate, because they aren't following those interactions.

If Vox and Sophistry magically went *poof* tomorrow, which would you miss more?

Sophistry, because it's more "mine," and because I'm more proud of my writing there. Vox is fun, and a great way to keep in touch with a personal network, but it's not quite mine -- Six Apart ultimately owns Vox and makes decisions about what you can and can't do there. I love the service, but they could do away with it tomorrow. With Sophistry I make all the decisions, so I guess I have more of an investment in it.

If someone you knew was thinking about starting a blog, based on your experiences how would you recommend they go about it?

I would tell them that it's really important to understand what you want to accomplish with a blog. People have been telling me for years that I should start a blog, but I didn't want to take on that project unless I knew what I (and any readers I might attract) would get out of it. There are millions of blogs out there but I would guess that much more than 90% of them are abandoned, because the blogger didn't understand what they wanted to do with it and decided it wasn't worth the effort after a few posts. And though it's very easy to publish, it's very difficult to get noticed by a really large number of people and even more difficult to become one of the few people who make any real money out of the enterprise.

The technical side is pretty simple--you can get started for free through one of the many blogging service out there, and that's probably all most people would need. If a blog will be in any way connected to your professional life, or it might be important in other ways, I would strongly recommend buying a domain and getting a hosting service. This is not at all expensive and ensures you control your own data. Finally, you have to get to know WordPress or Movable Type or some other blogging software, a process that is extremely easy and getting easier all the time.

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Do you maintain more than one blog, across more than one type of platform? I'd like to talk to you about how you feel your software/hosting choices have affected the character of the blogs, and vice-versa. Drop me an e-mail or a comment and let's talk.