The Followers Follow-up

I really enjoyed reading all of your comments on the previous post about the followers widget and live feed / stat trackers. Thank you for your well thought out and open responses.

So what did I glean from what you had to say? As I see it, the following:

1. This one should come as no big surprise. We are all individuals and as such, the reasons for having or not having these little gadgets vary widely from one person to the next. From "I think they are too highschoolish" to "I like the way they look on my sidebar", what one person might find as fun, another might view as ridiculous. So is one of these views more correct than another? Of course not. They are, just as we all are, different. Thank the good Lord for that too I say. Can you imagine how boring it would be if we all liked exactly the same things? Ugh.

2. There is no perfect formula for what my or any other blog should look like and trying to find it will only make a person crazy. If you like using a particular widget or doodad on your blog then go for it. It's your little piece of the Internet to do with as you see fit. We all have the ability to continue tuning in or to go elsewhere if what we see doesn't please us.

3. Three out of four commenters surveyed declare that I am in fact a macho stud muffin! Okay, so a couple of you said this, but come on, you had to know I'd be milking that one for all it was worth.

4. A couple of gadgets on a sidebar are probably not going to make someone stop reading your site. We are visited by the content of our blog, not because of what we have it decorated with. While we're on the subject, may I interject the following? Whether you post with humor, political commentary, beautiful photographs, stories, etc. keep doing what comes natural to you. When you start trying to change your individual style to conform to what you think others expect, then you'll be doing nothing but fighting an uphill battle.

5. Music. I'm glad someone brought this one up. Our musical styles do seem to be quite a personal thing don't they? We like what we like and would rather not be bothered with what we don't. I generally don't have my speakers on while I'm surfing around, so the music players don't make a difference to me. I suppose if I had them on, then these would be an annoyance to me, but again, to each his or her own. I do like the player bars that some use though. This gives me a choice as to whether or not I want to hit play.

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So what am I going to do about my own followers list? I think I'm going to keep it. I'll probably keep it at the top of the side bar for a while and when I feel like a change, I'll drop it down lower or even to the bottom of the page.

Site feed? I had the Cluster Map thingy before and kind of liked that one. Always thought it was fun to look at the world map and see where people were visiting from. No hidden agenda to it at all, just cool to know that people thousands of miles away would read my ramblings.

The blog list. That I'm definitely keeping. I love being able to see when you've posted something new, and this does a great job of that. There are a couple of exceptions to this "works great" part. For some reason there are still two blogs listed there that don't get updated or linked properly. Blogger gremlins perhaps, I really don't know why.

There, that about covers it for today.