The latest issue of Cell has an opinion piece on science blogs by Laura Bonetta. Laure did her homework. She interviewd many of us and distilled the results into a pretty good summary of what science blogging is all about [Scientists Enter the Blogosphere].
I'm pleased that she quoted me on the trade-off between writing a blog and the amount of time it takes away from doing other things.
Moran, at age 60, is somewhat unique among bloggers. Most bloggers, regardless of what they write about, tend to be younger. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project more than half of all bloggers in the United States are under the age of 30. “Most of my colleagues think what I do is strange. Partly, that's because they are not into the technology. I happen to have grown up with the Internet and understand its culture,” says Moran. “I think the younger people who are blogging now are likely to be doing it when they are 60.”This is an important point. I don't know how some of my blogger friends can keep on posting several things every day. It takes me hours to write up a scientific posting. I just can't do it every day.
The age barrier is not the only thing keeping more scientists from blogging. The biggest impediment is probably lack of time. According to most bloggers, posts can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to research and compose. That may not seem like much, except that a critical factor for a blog's success is that posts are updated frequently, ideally at least once a day. “If I ever stop doing this, it is because of time commitment,” says Moran.
On the other hand, it takes me only a few minutes to post an opinion piece. Perhaps that's why those postings are more common, even on science blogs. Here's the conundrum. Does a science blog need to have controversial opinion pieces in order to attract enough readers to make the science postings worthwhile? I think the answer is yes.
14 comments :
Larry,
My hope is that if you decide to change things to bolster traffic, that you won't nix your regular stuff, Monday molecule and the associated Noble laureate.
Personally, I don't comment very often, but I read you almost every day. Clearly, I like the way you do things.
For my browsing experience, you are a great complement to the blogs that post far more controversial or ire-raising stuff.
Yes, good blogs tends towards magazine format with mixed topics and frequent postings.
One exception is those that regularly produce high or unique quality material, like you, Cosmic Variance, Scott Aaronson, Terence Tao, John Hawks, among others. But these posts can only draw in serious commenters that can discuss the material on an adequate level, the rest of us will only visit.
I agree with Russ, in your case you could probably use your regular stuff only and still keep regular visitors. But the rest will draw more visitors and commenters if that is your fancy.
The problem with consumers is that they wish the products exceed their expectations. ;-)
Variety is good. I mix my hard science posts (although the really hard core molecular biologists might not consider them so, particularly when I analyze a clinical trial) with my off-the-cuff stuff that doesn't require any research.
There should also be an overarching theme of a blog to tie everything together. Although I cover a variety of formats (medicine, surgery, alternative medicine, ID and evolution, Holocaust denial, free speech, etc.), the overall theme of the blog is skepticism and critical thinking, coupled with the value of the scientific worldview over irrationality. No matter how varied the topics of my posts are, they only occasionally stray far from that theme.
It doesn't hurt to be able to be snarky and humorous from time to time, either.
As for where I have the time, as I usually say: I don't have any kids, and this is my primary hobby. If I had kids, I doubt that I'd have time to blog. In any case, it's not such a big deal to sit in front of the TV with my laptop for a couple of hours every night before bed and bang out a post or two. (Wireless networking is good.) That's time that, if I didn't blog, I'd probably just be watching TV, reading, or surfing the 'net anyway.
As I've mentioned in other comments, I'm a Master's student in English, but I love reading your blog. Even your hard-science stuff is pretty approachable to me. I don't have the kind of training to guess the Monday Molecule, but I always look forward to it. The hard-science stuff is definitely not something that turns me away!
I'm not sure it's always controversy per se that attracts readers, but perhaps "identification and vilification of external enemies" (http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html).
If I reach 250 readers a week, that's ten times the audience of some classes I've taught.
Moran, at age 60, is somewhat unique among bloggers.
It does not take a Master's degree in English to know that "somewhat unique" is poor writing.
I do not completely understand the need for frequency. No matter the frequency, if you (or any of the other blogs I follow) put up a post it will show up on my feed reader. If a blogger is posting interesting material I will keep coming back.
As far as what Orac says I have 2 young kids. So, no blogging for me. I try to comment occasionally but can't even find time to do that most days
Don't worry over the format. Some blogs go for huge essays, others go for snippets culled from around the web, others still some combination of the two. They can all be valid and interesting. The whole point of the web is to overturn publishing rules, not set new ones in stone. Blog how you like it.
Blog how you like it.
Agreed: your blog, your rules.
While a large audience can be useful, for example if one asks a question there could be a large and diverse group of people to provide good answers, I don't think a vast readership should be the goal of a blog. A mix of topics as is found here is probably good for attracting some readers who like what they read,, probably the only metric of blog success that matters (in my opinion).
Please keep up the good work, and thanks for writing this blog.
Frequency matters a great deal. I get a bit less than 30,000 visitors a day, which means I can tinker with things and see what is probably a statistically valid effect.
On a few days, I've scheduled short posts to appear at several hour intervals between midnight and 6am. I can get a 25% boost in traffic during that period (which is usually the most dead time for visitors).
I've had days where I might post something longish in the morning, and then let it sit quiet over the day. That costs me 20-30% of my traffic.
Larry's right that substantive science posts require some investment of effort. I've been slacking off on those for a few months -- I've got other projects and a big class that have been sucking away at my time, and time spent on the blog is one of the first things I have to cut.
I've still been putting up regular short opinion posts, and those really don't take much time to do. The thing is that once you've reached a certain critical mass, a lot of your content becomes driven by user comments. I can fling out something without too much effort on my part, but it's just a catalyst for discussion and the readers then do all the heavy lifting. In that sense, I don't think the quickies are at all a compromise in the quality of the conversation. (That would change if I quit putting any effort into posts, or if I stopped policing the comments and let them become too noisy.)
Honestly, it gets easier the bigger you are. All you have to do is regularly nudge to keep the snowball rolling.
That said, though, I think it would also be easy to kill a blog. Stop posting altogether for long stretches, or pull a major content switcheroo like the Raving Atheist did. One of the reasons we see traffic declines in the summer is that we bloggers will do things like take vacations -- take a whole week off from a blog and you can see traffic plummet precipitously.
I think there is, or could be, another model entirely to science blogs. Namely, an accessible source of semi-specialized reference material. For me, it is not about growing a large and regular readership, so political/cultural issues are not an important hook in my particular case. The difference is roughly akin to, say, a scientific journal versus a science-oriented magazine. We probably need both, but they have different readerships and objectives. A blog lets me share ideas and information that are otherwise unavailable to most people, and to post in a comparatively short time some things that I have never gotten around to writing for publication. Once it is posted, it becomes available to people who may search on that topic later, and as such I am not as concerned with daily traffic (though of course one needs to know that someone is reading the postings). There is also an issue of who the readers are in terms of what they are looking for, which makes sheer numbers an only partially informative metric. I think PZ's megablog has a major place, but I think there can also be smaller ones that focus only on the science. At least, that's my hypothesis, being tested currently.
Does a science blog need to have controversial opinion pieces in order to attract enough readers to make the science postings worthwhile?
That assumes that the poeple who read the opinion pieces also read the science posts. I don't think that's always the case.
See also Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore. Where you'll find this:
"#4 – Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty: Seth Godin (a frequent blogger) has a very interesting theory. According to him, RSS fatigue is already setting in. With too many posts, you run the risk of losing loyal readers, overwhelmed by the clutter you generate. Readers will start to tune off if your blog takes up too much of their time."
I know that's true for me. I'd like two separate feeds, one for content and one for opinion and trivia and "here's a cool link" posts. Guess that will come eventually.
Well you can have mass traffiic if you have a "pamphletary" blog. But don't be expected to be recognized as a genius, you know...
Plus, you must disemvowell or ban people if you plan to have a truly "provocative", low-stabbing pamphletary blog. The place will reek with putrefaction if you don't clean up. Jutsimagine how PZ's blog would look like if he didin't clean it up.
Some fellow scientists will comment criticizing you pampheltarianims. PZ bans those too if they critcize too strongly. As blog master, he can dish it out but he doesn`t have to take any.
Plus, PZ even puts out a list of the pople he has banned, which is used as a blacklist by other bloggers.
In the end being pamphetarian is more for the ethically phony. You may increase traffic, but traffic is not all that blogging is about.
TR Gregory says,
I think there is, or could be, another model entirely to science blogs. Namely, an accessible source of semi-specialized reference material. For me, it is not about growing a large and regular readership, so political/cultural issues are not an important hook in my particular case.
I understand the desire for such a blog and I know that there will always be a certain number of these type of blogs. That's not the kind of blog I want since the "political/cultural" issues have always been important to me. I got involved because of the evolution vs creationism controversy. Now I'm also very much interested in the rationalism vs superstition controversy.
It will be interesting to see if the pure science blogs attract a significant number or readers. Why is this important? Well, for me it's important because I'd like to reach as many people as possible. If I can't do it through blogging then it's back to the newsgroups I go. Perhaps other activities will be a better use of my time.
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