State of Ant's BlogSphere (3 years Anniversary)

OK, around this time of year theres a review of whats happening around social networking, blogging etc... Dave Sifry has done a very good 2-part review and that and conversations happening over with Tillerman have prompted me to do a similar thing and look forwards to where all this is going...

Its amazing that we are very close to being up and running for 3 (THREE) whole years now... Woow.. the first ever post was on Tuesday, May 20, 2003 on Boat Names. Them were the good old days...or is now the good days and they were he days when only 2 or 3 people looked at the site...?

Anyway, now I'm averaging around 20-30 or so visitors a day which I was happy happy with, always trying to drive a little more traffic, but that seemed reasonable.. until I asked around..jeeze some people get 100+ visitors a day..wow I want that NOW....

However I am dmned pleased with my geographical spread of visitors.. take a look at my ClusterMap which shows a really good (from my perspective) global reach of soulsailor even just in the last month that I have had that data captured pictorally on my site..

BTW I'm in the process of doing a web stats trial between what I currently use, WebStat and another very popular tool, SiteMeter (that Tillerman uses); after 3/4 of a day SiteMeter seems to be showing 15% more vistors above WebStat.. don't know which is more accurate, but SiteMeter shows how long someone has spent viewing the page which is very important for a blogger and for that reason I am looking forward a great deal to MeasureMap (Google bought it before I managed to subscribe!) which is 100% geared to blogs so shows more around "attention" and what a "reader" does participating in your site...that excites me!

One of the things thats been discussed on couple of sailing blogs, primarily Tillerman is around "conversations" i.e. cross site discussions I mention summat, you comment, some se posts on it etc etc.. thats the cool thing about blogging... but I don't seem to stimulate much of it....... The other aspect is linking... I link to other posts.. but not much more than that..I need to participate more in the sailing blogosphere (for any geeks reading this theres more about the "Participation Web")

So here's the plan...

Change the links that I care about from being in the drop down on the left (link engines dont recognise them as far as I am aware) to being "plain text links"....

Expand the blogs I read and be more conversational with them... theres a whole host of UK sailing blogs that I hadnt really noticed, looked at so why should they look at or notice me.. so heres the first batch of sailing blogs with some focus on the UK ones, that I'm gonna have in my RSS reader and regularly consume (lets hope they reciprocate if we have any synergy!):

H2uh0 top blog, mix of sailing surfing and other water based stuff, great fun to read
Litoralis I like this, not much sailing currently, but by the looks of a recent post he'll be back on the water a LOT soon..
Sailing Dog No sign of mutts, but looks an interesting site, it appears he's in the Australian sailing team, so is a definate must read over the next few months.. whoever you are let me know...
Ferroever This woman is mad...Maria I think,, she seems to be mixing sailing with alcohol..terrible, oh no wait a minute..thats the bassi of my blog too :-) Maria says she's Bridget Jones with a boat, she's cool!
FuffBlog - well this may be about sailing, not got my head around it yet... its a joint effort Fur and Fuff.. I'll kep reading till I work it out...
Sailing through the Fence - this is one I have an affinity for, a UK guy I think whose now in Germany trying to work out how to get his loved Ent over their... If you need a hand, get in touch!
Today I Have Been is a blog that covers a host of things including a guys journey into sailing.. some good stuff here..
LiveSailDie - a classic blog, bloody funny, great content... I NEED to read this one more..
SailRacing another German site, mixed language, but even the stuff I don't understand is great thanks to some great pics...
SailScape - havent had time to read anything but the pictures are great.. check it out
Scott//projectsomewhere looks like its a foilin' moth site and has some great radical stuff on it..exhilirating!

..and Finally.. the one I found, then lost and have found again.. a blog, in the UK, by an Ent sailor... let me shake you by the virtual hand..I'll buy you a pint if our paths should cross, which they should!
All Day I Dream About Sailing .... yes we all do... thankyou for blogging about it!

WOW there's more of you out there than I though.. and thats just the tip of the iceberg.. so I'm gonna start tracking you guys and more..participating, supporting and sprerading da word... hopefully what I'm sying is cool for you guys and we can all learn and be entertained by each other... right what else...

Post more... I've mainly posted about sailing events, and this year thats likely to be around 1 major event per month..thats not gonna keep you interested.. so I need to post more about sailing ket..other sailing events, sites and blogs and most importantly I think, post about sailing stuff.. i.e. "should you go high or low on the reach".... "how do you get a good start" and also on historic stuff... I've been sailing for 20-odd years I've got stuff to say..just not been saying it..so sorry, good luck.. I'm gonna start talking a lot more!