Short poem:
Every frog,
and his dog,
had a blog,
but it was fog,
that daily log.
Blogs are so boring - they all look the same. Everyone uses the same ASP/PHP script to run their blog sites. Everyone uses the same ugly GoogleAds on their blogs.
If your blog has really good information then people will still visit it. But people still get sick and tired of the same old blog script even if you have useful information on it.
If you really want to stand out and have an impact, you had better write your own script, or modify the blog to be more integrated into your website. If you don't have a website, that's going to be the first thing to get.
Dates tend to become obsolete
..but information does not. Blogs impose dates on the author and the reader, making a lot of information appear to be obsolete when in fact it is timeless. For example, this page you are reading right now is not time crucial. The date I wrote this doesn't really matter. So why impose a date on myself or the reader?
People love shopping malls, and blogs
...but it doesn't suit everyone. People love boring stuff and is why shopping malls and blogs are so successful. But if you want to be someone - if you want to stand out - if you want to be bad - if you want to be a rebel - if you want to be famous - don't focus all your efforts into a blog. Make your own website with your own damn scripts and programs. It will take time, but it is well worth it.
Standalone blogs versus integrated blogs
The other alternative, if you really must have the blog, is to at least integrate the blog into a website. Instead of it being a standalone blog, integrating it and skinning it right in to the website will make it more unique. Then people can navigate to your website, if they want to. If you for example wrap the blog into the website so that your navigation bars or sidebars for the site are still visible, it won't look like such a boring blog. At least it will have the touching finish of your website wrapped around it.
The internet is about style too, not just information
The internet needs to be an enjoyable place to come to. Things need to look good. If every man and woman on the street looked exactly the same, and every building looked exactly the same - life would get boring. True, blogs have skinning abilities - but that is just like having all the buildings on a street exactly the same with different paint color. Still boring.
Do it in style - be pleasant - be different. Don't just install or start writing a blog like everyone else is - try and be a bit stylistic.
It's not just blogs
The other boring software floating about the internet is mediawiki. Everyone and there dog seems to have a media wiki. I can't tell whether I'm on Jim's wiki or Bob's wiki, because all the damn media wiki's look the same. And it gets tiring after a while. I don't want to come on the internet unless it's going to be fun. Visiting each website and seeing that everyone has the same script installed is not fun. It turns people away from the internet. It confuses people - was that bob's wiki or jim's wiki that I found that information on? They all look the same, who knows!
On that note, how about PasWiki
I'm going to encourage people to hack up and modify PasWiki, because I sure as hell don't want PasWiki's replicating like rabbits all over the internet. I don't want my site to look exactly like someone else's site. Download the Simple Wiki source code from powtils and modify it, please.
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