Hearing some of the silent voices

After seeing it in action on several sites I visit, especially Randy’s, Kiltak’s, and Doug’s, I decided to join MyBlogLog and setup the widgets on my blogs. Almost immediately I started getting page views referred from MyBlogLog. Within a week, overall new visitors nearly doubled.

But that’s only part of the good news. I’m always looking for fresh perspectives, and a lot of those usually don’t come to my attention thanks to the echo chamber effect. Yes, whether you think it’s cheerfully unintentional or maliciously calculating, it’s hard to dispute the fact that most people link to the same people most of the time. So via links in “the conversation” alone, it can take a while to find your way to someone new.

MyBlogLog tells me about some of the people who are reading my blog, even if they’re too shy to comment or don’t feel like they have anything to add that’s on topic. If a MyBlogLog member adds me as a contact, especially if they say they’re a fan, then that makes me think we might be looking for similar insights — so I’ll visit their blogs. True, a lot of it is pure crap — er I mean, not within my circle of interest. But if I see anything compelling, I’ll subscribe for a while. That adds them to every page on this blog (in the sidebar blogroll), which starts that ol’ Google-juice a-flowin’.

If you’re a bottom-of-the-Technorati-heap blogger who wants to get my attention, the best way is still to leave a comment here. But short of that, add me as a MyBlogLog contact or leave me a message there. I check those messages daily. I sure wish they had an RSS feed for those.

And I wonder how long until my profile starts getting spamhammered.