Degutis.org

Recently I’ve been talking to some friends in our private IRC channel about how presenting yourself online affects you. Essentially, their argument was “you have to market yourself” and “it’s all a numbers game”. I completely disagree.

The conversation started when I changed my twitter icon to one very similar to the new generic bird, but changed the hue. Ian Meyer ended up telling me it was a very bad idea to blend in with the “unwashed masses” by not having a custom icon.

(First let me state that I disagree that my icon is not unique. I think that it stands out very well considering everyone I follow has a custom icon, so I feel mine is very prominent. But that’s besides the point).

Ian’s concept works well for many. They constantly check their blog stats and see where visitors are coming from; they’ll usually try new avenues of getting more visitors for the sake of increasing their readership; and they’re often blogging about topics they think get them more visitors, rather than what they really care about.

My philosophy on this topic stands in stark contast to his:

I only blog about what I feel strongly about. I only write code that I want to write. I only share code that I feel others may find useful. None of this is done in order to increase my readership. With my blog, my twitter, and my code, I aim to be quality, not quantity.

For over a year now, I’ve been reading theocacao.com by Scott Stevenson, and and possibleprobable.com by Aaron Hillegass. Neither of them blog or tweet on a regular basis, or have a schedule of any kind. In fact, both blogs often skip for months at a time. But when they do update, their posts are quality, and often either very inspiring or informative.

My goal on degutis.org and on twitter is not to become well known. I don’t care about fame, or how many readers I have. I’m not aiming to be the next MacGruber. In fact, I haven’t checked my statistics for degutis.org in months… I just post things I like, and try to give back to the community where I can (usually with source code or tips and tricks). And I genuinely hope the readers I have (and I never know who you are) find it useful or informative, or maybe even inspiring.