Long time readers of 11D know that I blow hot and cold on this blogging thing.

Sometimes I’m swept away by the energy and potential of this medium. There’s great conversation between smart individuals of various backgrounds. PhDs and high school graduates are equal. If you have unlimited time, a voracious appetite for statistics, and a cunning writing style, you can be a star for the day. If you have a pet issue, you can be a reliable source of information for those who affect change.

Sometimes I’m disgusted by the replay of the same discussions over and over, the juvenile name calling, and the redundancy between the blogs and op-ed articles. And often, I’m frustrated by my own lack of time to devote to blogging.

Today, I’m in a rah-rah blogging mood. I’m collecting e-mail address of various blogs for a new blog survey that I’m working on with a colleague. In the past couple of days, I’ve visited a hundred or so blogs, many for the first time.

Huffington’s blog is taking a lot of flack from other bloggers. We don’t like interlopers. It’s a little dullsville, but I’m curious what others think about it. Huffington Toast is a riot.

1:45
There’s a conference going on at the Grad Center in NYC right now about blogging. Unfortunately, we didn’t find about it until last minute. Really peeved. But I have a mole there, who’s calling in information to me during breaks. Some notes she just threw at me:
– One speaker estimated that as many as 70% of bloggers could be indentified as “influentials.” This contradicts a recent Pew study that found that bloggers weren’t that influential.
– Several bloggers pointed out that the way to be successful was to obsess on one or two issues and be “knighted” by an A-list blogger.
– Also discussed was how there are definitely traffic surges during certain key moments, ie. when Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed.
– On-line diaries are growing more popular.

2:15
Hubby has been reading this blog for weeks, because of it’s great weekly recap of Survivor.

(Okay, I peetered out at around 3:00. I read twenty identical posts on flushing the Koran down the potty and felt that I had enough. But I’ll keep posting on this topic in the next few weeks.)