It's All About Numbers

I was discussing blogging with a friend yesterday. He was of the opinion that quite a few people (including me) take the online life too seriously. Be it blogging or other social networking sites. People take part in contests, get offended on remarks made on social networking sites, bash others and react on such trivial things and such. Well, a few of the things are applicable to me, like I feel really offended if someone writes wrong things about me or tries to malign my name and reputation which is too dear to me. Defending that is taking online things seriously, then yes, I do take it seriously.

When it comes to blogging, I write when I feel like and time permits. I neither write for numbers or comments since the time I have started blogging. I don't take part in blog contests too if you ignore my BPL participation which went on for quite a long period as we won it! 

But my dear friend is unaware that there are people who really take the online world way too seriously. Whatever he mentioned were not even the qualifiers for being "serious" about social networking. He is a very busy person so I can't ask him to check a few blog communities or twitter, but the day I do, he will call me the sanest person he knows on this planet earth!

People breathe sites. They kill for numbers. When I was new to blogging, I got many comments saying - "nice blog. Please visit mine too, follow and leave a comment". I knew so many bloggers who used to visit 50 odd blogs a day just to get those 50 comments each day! They seldom read the posts, maintained a style and words when it came to commenting, ALWAYS praised the blogger to be in her (well, it's usually her. very few visit his blogs!) good books. And it worked too for many. They always got the "desired" number at the end of the day. The only thing they cared for - the number! In case of comments, followers, hits, page views. 

Slowly the "follow blog" trend shifted to facebook fan page. People sent invites left-right-center for asking friends to be the "fan" of their blog page. After that faded away, now it was Twitter's turn. And when it comes to twitter followers, people still fight for them, cry when they un-follow and celebrate when they have a "special" number as followers like 500 or 1000 etc. Recommendations, follow friday, mutual admiration clubs are few of the main features of twitter. 

Ah, it's all about numbers these days. Number of comments on blog, number of fans on facebook and number of followers on twitter. 

My dear friend should see those numbers, then he will know that I am but a minuscule (rather, non existing) part of this social networking bandwagon. I am sure his definition of "celebrity" will change after that for sure!