THE HIP

A Thinker's Shared Spot of Stories of Living



Thursday, April 28, 2005

Blogexplosion Phenomena

by Eko Prasetyo @ 8:36 PM

Welcome, Blogexploder friends!

I know who you are and what you are : you are a blogger who is participating in a cool phenomena called Blogexplosion, hoping that by leaping from blogs to blogs, you'll get people reaching your own blog and having them read who you are.

Why do I know it?

Cause, friends, that's how I get people visiting my blog :D

And I don't know if you're going to "booooo" me or mock me as a latecomer cause you have been Blogexploding for so long, have been raking millions of credits, have been having your banners displayed everywhere, and have written about how great Blogexplosion is, but I just have to write something about it. Writing is my biggest hobby now, aside from browsing and reading (and playing zuma ). These hobby makes me a person fit for a blogexploder, don't you think?

'Cause, you know, to be a blogexploder, you need to be a blogger, right? And to be a good blogger, you need to write a lot appropriate to the themes that drive you to write a blog. Otherwise, what's the function of a blog?

Now, for me, writing blogs isn't just about, well, writing blogs.

It serves nicely as a mean to train my idea spilling coordination ability. Take, for instance, this particular post. I have to think things that fits the theme "blogexploding phenomena" nicely. How fast I completed this post depends on how fast I spawn ideas on my brain, sorting them out, filtering them, and then finally how fast can my fingers dance across the keyboard, pressing the approprite keys without hitting backspace again and again like I have been doing now. Few hundreds more posts, and I believe my fingers will develop eyes for themselves that will coordinate with my primary eyes (those two that are besiegeng the nose) and thus they'll be helping me writing a thousand words post in under 5 minutes.

It also serves nicely as a mean to train my HTML tags and Blogger's own codes of blog's template composing ability. At first, making a blog hosted by blogger seems to be a simple matter of registering your name, making a name for your blog, and chosing an available template. After you've done doing all of those thing, alakazam, you're changed : from a simple person to a blogger, from a shyguy to one who dare to express himself, from an internet browser to an internet citizen, from a simple, humble person to be a proud element of a coolest revolution ever in human civilization : BLOGGER !

But then you got bored on just posting. You suddenly have the idea of visiting other blogs, and to your surprise, the 10th or something blog that you visited give you a degree of Deja Vu : it has the similar colors, the similar structures, and even somehow similar smells of something that you know much of : your own blog.
In that instant, your ego is annoyed. Your dormant creativity instinct kicks in. What's left of that "I have to be different" drives that you have during your long forgotten puberty force you to look up things up and down, left and right, fore and back, only to bring you closer and closer to reach the one ultimate goal : Your Own Theme of Your Own Blog!

Then you found the Template to your blog laying there in your dashboard, waiting to be touched, given a unique look, a unique taste, a unique smell. To your horror, the template is a mess of intelligible sentences lines, sentences stacked like some kind of worthless blabbering that those geeks friends of yours down at the IT division wrote. And to your shocking realization, you have to be that kind of geek to truly able transform your "common" blog into an "elite-class" blog.

So there's time when you are scouring through the blabbers, learning their structures, learning the meanings of each written words, learning the causes and effects of each letters put there, and when the enlightment shines on you, you come to an understanding : HTML.

So folks, understanding of HTML tags is the key to change, by your own hands and not by paying someone else, the way your blog looks.

And I've learnt a few basic, useful tags needed so far for my blog to have its own unique characteristic. I've removed some images that can slowdown the loading of my blog, I have even learnt how link images to external sites instead of using Hello! Bloggerbot. The next tags I think I need to learn will be the tag to form tables, but that for my other blog, where I display the pages of my comic.

Thank you, friend, if you have read this far and about to continue reading :D

The next one purpose for creating blog for me is to train myself on how to create a written work that can make people read it till the end. It's just like this posting. I believe, if you have read it till this -->word<--- , that means I have been able to make you follow my writing. Hopefully, my skill on writing will evolve to a degree that everyone can enjoy it, that everyone can be impressed by it, and somehow put an element of it into their hearts. For now, This is what my writing skill is all about.

And there's a little commercial purpose by creating this blog. I was hoping I can reap the benefits of using Google AdSense, that comes midway during my first month blogging, but due to my own terrible error on pushing things, I am forever banned from said service.

Then I a word suddenly sprung on my mind, thrown from the back of my brain, like an old, fun, useful toy suddenly drop off the top of your wardrobe : Affiliate.
I zoomed instanly to Amazon.com, hoping that they have some kind of affiliate program, and woilaaa, the have it. So I registered, and suddenly my sidebar turned into a virtual bookstore. There are only a few number of it now, but the catalogue will eventually grow.

And I came across mediaplazza.com, the mobile device contents provider. They have some affiliation program too, but it's not universal, so I just put in a banner at the very bottom of my blog.

And finally, the reason why I write blog is because I want to express myself, to channel my creativity, to share my thoughts, to share my emotional swings to something when I can't find anyone near to talk to. Very personal, but that's what Blog is in the essence : personal things shared to the world.

Still here and wondering where the hell is the "Blogexplosion Phenomena" ? You don't mind reading for some more , won't you ? ;)

Now, after all have been done and said, I have a blog ready for the world to see. Months come, I keep on posting : diary entries, emotional outbursts, opinion columns, photoblogs, and all that I know how to post.
And then I come to a realization that no one read my blog but me.

This is when I saw a blogger's praise on blogexplosion.

Blogexplosion, I thought? Hey, I have been a blogexplosion member! I have put a small image of blogexplosion somewhere on my sidebar but have forgotten it. So I decided to use it, tried blogexploding, and finally, like almost everyone else (that includes you, right?), addicted to it.

Thanks God my ISP has repaired my Connection.

Blogexplosion has ways to make themselves very fun, very useful, very effective, and very addictive.

Fun? Yes, basically when using Blogexplosion, you have to surf other blogs to earn credits. And to me, who is a junkie for written words, surfing other people's blogs is a very entertaining, mind opening, resource gathering activity. And I just love being entertained, have my mind opened, and be able to gather resources. That's why Blogexploding was so much fun for me.

And the "exchange credits for banner impressions' is a somewhat fun thing to do as well. It is somewhat an exciting thing to see your own created banner (yes, I create my own banner, and although still very ugly, proud of it) being seen by people. But this option have been giving me only 1 % clickthrough rate at the best. I am thinking of changing my banner, and hopefully I can gain some inspirations on how to make it look like.

And then the last ones are blog lottery and shoutbox (sorry guys, I haven't played texas hold'em up, yet). Blog lottery is an afterthought, putting credits into it when I feel like doing it. Shoutbox is where I occasionally where I advertised my blog "Hey Dude, Come to My Blog".

Very useful? Yes, it is very useful. You simply can use blogexplosion to "force" people to come to your site and be awed (or be flabbergasted, be annoyed, be offended, or whatever be that your site can do to its readers)to it. But to make people come to your blog, you have to visit other blogs. So its a very useful tool to read other people's blogs and take inspirations from them. I have come across a few blogs that I think have the "ooomph" needed to decorate my own blog with.

Effective, isn't it? You got people come to your blog(s),you see other people's blogs and learn from them, you got fun, and you got one more reason to spend your free time browsing the internet.

To me, Blogexplosion has covered every aspects of the experience it offers to make it very addictive. it feeds my needs : to read new things, to have people come to my site, to find inspirations, and to gather resources. And all of these can be done very easily by clicking the right numbers and waiting for another 30 seconds reading the blog you are positioned by it at the time. Do it time after time, and it feels exactly like when I played Zuma the first time : Simple, Fun, Challenging, and ADDICTIVE.

And now, with so many people joining everyday, we can expect it to be more useful, more effective, more fun, and more addictive everyday !!
Although there will be more articles on Blogexplosion in the future, but for now Blogexplosion, I think, is the next REVOLUTION in the Cyberworld together with GMAIL

This has been a very long article, and I thank you for your time to read it !

Here, have a rose as a sign for appreciation



Hope you can BLOGMARK my blog and come again sometimes :)