The sound of one blogger clapping

Dear Reader:

I’ve been writing this blog, Annoying Design, sporadically for a few months now, and so far few, if any, have read it.

While my goal here isn’t necessarily courting readers, I admit that I’m disappointed that I’m still talking to myself here. Now, I haven’t told people about this blog, let alone taken the time to do a visual design (my apologies that it still looks like shit). And so I wonder:

If a blog is posted in the Blogosphere, but no one is there to read it, does it really make a difference?

I’m waxing introspective today, mainly because I just finished watching Mena Trott of Six Apart speak about what blogs mean -- about their power as medium to communicate, connect, and to memorialize.

If anyone argues that blogs aren’t inherently vehicles for people’s voices, thoughts, opinions, and feelings -- here’s something for you:

A post from a Cisco corporate blog that is full of thought and emotion.

At Forrester Research, the CXP team has been looking into corporate blogs a lot recently. One report about blog usability, titled “Blog Design is Broken,” will be out soon, with a few more in the works.

Mena’s speech made me proud to be researching the blog arena. Some people argue that blogs are nothing more than a website, of “Bulletin Boards 2.0” to which I can only say: “you’re missing the point entirely.”

- Ross