How Much Does The Name Of Your Blog Matter?
I have noticed a curious thing lately. The actual name of the blogs I read have to do with my perception of them. Let me explain. I use NewsGator integrated with Outlook as my rss reader. When I come into work in the morning, all of the blog posts since the end of the previous work day are downloaded and they show up as unread mail in outlook. My usual routine is to just click on 'Unread Mail' and begin reading from the top down. So here is the thing, since the blogs are generally sorted by their alpha numeric name, I get to the ones which are named starting with A-D much sooner than the ones that start with letters later in the alphabet. So why does this matter? Well, let me give you an example: There are at least 3 different feeds which I read which basically aggregate various stories from a round the web and report the ones they find interesting. The first one is the one and only Digg. I subscribe to the front page feed as a way to keep up with what the Digg community deems as interesting or important. The content of this feed can be both interesting and very annoying (but that is a different top altogether). The next feed is Gizmodo's main feed. This feed consists of anything and everything having to do with gadgets. The third "catch all" feed is the main feed on Techmeme. This site just basically aggregates what is currently popular in the blogosphere. These topics tend to be mostly techy and geeky in content. The thing is, the content of these three feeds sometimes overlaps.
So if the same story is in all three feeds, I tend to see it in Digg first and Techmeme last. Does this mean that Tecmeme is somehow delivering me old information? No, but it tends to appear that way. I have noticed that when I am looking through my blog feeds I read Digg items more closely but by the time I get to the end and I am on the Techmeme feed, I am less interested and I tend to skim more than read. Over time, this makes Digg seem more "cool" and up to date than Techmeme in my mind. Does anybody else run into this problem? I guess I should rename my blog "Aardvark's Antics".