I read my friend Danny's Daypop's Top 40 list at least once every 2 or 3 days and today there was a headline "Blogging with MovableType" but that wasn't what caught my attention.
What caught my attention was the URL which was www.tokyoshoes.com. Could the Tokyo in Tokyoshoes.com be another blogger in Tokyo? I don't actually track any other blogs at the moment. Once in a while I stumble on something but for some reason, even without reading any blogs I find I spend way WAY too much time on the net.
But, wasting more time as usual I followed the link and found a pretty interesting blog there. That some how led me to japanmediareview.org which claims blogging by foriengers is big in Japan and is slowly catching on with the locals and that led me to easterwood.org which lists over 100 "expat" blogs.
Where did all these people come from? Even funnier, I found two of my friends, people I actually hang out with, have blogs listed there. One of them I didn't even know had a blog. I guess he did mention he was going to put up this video on his blog just after he and my other friend got done making it but for some reason it didn't dawn on me to ask about his site (or maybe I did and I forgot by the time I got home. That happens a lot to me).
On top of that, the fact that both of them were listed made me wonder how involved with the whole Tokyo Expat Blog Scene are they? It's never come up before in any conversations with them.
It also makes me curious, how much time to people spend updating their blogs. As much as my site gets updated I never feel like I have enough time. Just making this post here will probably take me 30 to 45 minutes. Looking up all those links, finding my way back to the places that caused me to want to write this post takes time, and then proofreading, something I don't do enough of because I've already spend too much time writing the damn post. It can take another 10 to 20 minutes at a minimum if there are pictures involved and often a lot more. You've got to find them, load them into photoshop, crop, filter, level, save, then you've got to upload them etc. It makes me wonder how someone can keep a blog like Tokyoshoes.com. Every couple of days she's got new pictures up there.
I suppose the first thing people might point out his how big my site is. Maybe I'm getting the same reaction by looking at these sites that people get looking at mine. "Where do they find the time?" I don't actually spend that much time on mine. You can tell, sometimes there will be nothing for a week or more. I also do things in batches. I have a post dating system so for example I can add 10 or 20 "10 second photo gallery" images and post date them 1 every 2 weeks or something. If I happen to have a lot I can make it appear I'm posting new content often when in reality I just spent 4−6 hours one Sunday night making 10 images or reviews and post dating them.
Then, I also wonder, how much time do these people spend reading each other's sites. Like I mentioned, I read almost no−one's sites. In fact, since my friend Danny stopped his blog there are no blogs I look at daily or even weekly. The closest would be joelonsoftware.com although I'm not sure that qualifies as a blog, at least if you were playing "which one is not like the others" his would be the one. So, when I see a *typical* blog with links to 10, 20, 40 other blogs I wonder, are they reading all of them everyday? How much time is that a day?
Tell me, how much time do you spend writing a blog if you have one and how much time do you spend reading them if you do? (ps, this post took me about 1 hr)