Monday, December 22, 2003
From Your Blog Shall We Know Thee?
I read a newpaper article a few years ago where the reporter interviewed a letter carrier and asked him to profile some of the people on his delivery route based on the mail they received. The writer compared notes with the people the carrier had profiled. He was pretty accurate in many cases. We have limited control of what mail we receive. Much of it, especially junk mail, is based on our spending habits, or other profile information. Analyzing someone's trash or email or credit card bills would provide similar insights into their life.
Blogs are a little different. We control what we reveal. Some bloggers report all sorts of details of their private lives; others, like me, are more circumspect. Most of my entries are technical, not about my personal or work life. I'm not trying to hide anything, I'm just being careful about what I talk about in such a public setting. The thing is, only a few people visit my blog directly but many others will happen upon it via a Google search. It's pretty interesting to see which queries end up here. Often two or more totally unrelated blog entries cause a Google "hit" that ends up here.
Blogs are a little different. We control what we reveal. Some bloggers report all sorts of details of their private lives; others, like me, are more circumspect. Most of my entries are technical, not about my personal or work life. I'm not trying to hide anything, I'm just being careful about what I talk about in such a public setting. The thing is, only a few people visit my blog directly but many others will happen upon it via a Google search. It's pretty interesting to see which queries end up here. Often two or more totally unrelated blog entries cause a Google "hit" that ends up here.
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