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The other day I asked Vipul, a friend of mine ( his site , his blog ) to go through my blog. He replied with a mail containing some very interesting points and I thought it appropriate to post them up here. Some of his comments reflect his personal tastes but not all. So here goes :



Here are some comments on your blog:
http://search-search-and-searchme.blogspot.com/

First of all, I must confess that this is not the kind of blogging style that I am comfortable with, and hence my comments are coloured by my personal discomfort. It is possible that for the target audiences that your blog is aimed at, the points that I raise are not applicable.

Things I am somewhat uneasy with:

* Your blog posts don't clearly define, or explain, much of the new terms and jargon they introduce. Rather, they coolly and unceremoniously point to links. Moreover, it often happens that visiting the link pointed at only serves to confuse rather than clarify because it goes to a very general page.

The high linkedness of your page is to be appreciated (and it's probably one of the desirable features in modern blogging) but I am always more contented with a blog post that makes complete sense even without a person bothering to follow any of the links. Of course, this may further depend on the background of the person. For instance, a person who is anyway up-to-date on the latest products and services offered by Google and Microsoft may not have to follow many of the links. Depending on the kind of audience you are aiming at, I think you should seek to make the blog post self-contained for that audience (or at least, the person's understanding of one sentence should not depend on having gone to a link in an earlier sentence).

* Your blog posts are too short. Again, a matter of personal taste. I prefer longer blog posts. Some of my own get too verbose, of course. What I'm really talking about in length is not the number of words but the internal structure: an introductory gambit that introduces the ideas to be discussed, a main body where several ideas are
discussed, and then some conclusions (for longer ones, many iterations between ideas and conclusions). A few twists in between. If you're aiming at a "news blog" I think this one does the trick reasonably well. But I think that as a "trend analysis" blog this doesn't quite meet up to the mark. You seem largely keen to state some words, drop some names, point to some sources, make some grand statements and quit with a "wait-n-watch".

* I think you should completely avoid hyperlinks in your conclusion, and you should specially avoid conclusions like "I don't know ..." specially if you blog post started out with "We shall determine whether ..."

* Avoid saying things like "anyone who has..." or "it is obvious that..." I know I do that sometimes too but that's my bad habit :)

* A question: what kind of comments do you really seek? Do you hope that people will follow all the links, read all the articles/go through the websites, and get back with comments? For the kind of posts that you have written, the comments you get will largely be meaningless because the general class of people who try to comment
sensibly will first try to follow all the links so they'll be exhausted by the time they return.