I added the "Followers" widget to my sidebar. (Blogs I follow are on my profile page.) It seems a sparkly way for bloggers to see each other. Sign on if you want, or whatever. I don't use Site Meter or any other tracking option, so I don't know you're here, if you don't tell me, which is fine. I don't like feeling tracked myself. (And based on a creepy experience on my old blog, I'm not sure I want to know who's lurking).
What creepy experience?
ReplyDeleteI put the tracking on my blog recently, my friend Venus has it on her too.
As someone who deals with the computers and programing on the daily basis I knew how much info you can get from the net, but seeing it in life and so readily available to anyone who put the tracker on the site is a bit alarming.
Sort off, when you see those infos so readily displayed it really strikes you. The tracking is way beyond the annoyance of the spam mail.
Oh, it's just that I found out an ex-lover had been reading my old blog all along. He'd gone through a series of steps to find it.
ReplyDeleteHe wasn't dangerous or anything, and of course everything I write is open to the world, but I didn't want or need to know he was there. I deleted that blog and a couple years later started this one. (There were other reasons, too, and I was ready for a break anyway.)
Now I just don't track who's there.
As you say, it's a bit alarming what you can find on the net--sometimes I just don't want to know!
And of course, in order for someone to read it that have to really want to, and most people are blissfully unmotivated and unaware, or are all busy on Facebook. Keeps them from snooping over here, ha ha.
ReplyDeleteBefore I started a blog I decided that I had to assume that all my students, colleagues and friends might, could, maybe even would read it, so everything on it had to be something I could bear to see on the front page of the Star Tribune ("U prof said X!ZOMG! waste of taxpayers money!!")or say to someone in person (like my dad). The funny thing is that I have readers whom I don't know and who never comment (I know this because my Sitemeter stats are fairly constant) and the people I really wanted to read it in the first place (some family members) really can't be bothered, unless I send them an email with a link, and even then I know they don't.
I feel comfortable enough now that I might be ready to start a blog under my full name for work related stuff, because I'm seeing how other people are making it work for them.
RIght, Momo: Ha! Most people don't want to read my blog, much less go through the work of digging it up. : )
ReplyDeleteMe, too--I don't post anything I consider private, though I suppose some bits of my bad or sloppy writing would embarrass me. After all, blogs are published in public: this is it!
(It wasn't that I was hiding anything from the ex-lover, I just thought it was creepy he was hanging around. I believe he is long gone now. But I'm not checking. Sometimes choosing illusion is a good choice.)
I like seeing your icon in my Follow You/Me box!