One person reads this blog, and statistically, it's not you

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Apple board member, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, multi-billionaire, nerd-hero and good friend of mine [citation needed], made this joke at a conference:

Most blogs have precisely one reader—the blogger themself.

I think he was making fun of me. It’s not just a joke; it’s true most of the time. No one knows how many blogs there are. If you count a myspace profile as blog, then there are at least tens of millions. Facebook has also allowed blogging using their Notes module. If I had to guess, I would have to say that there are about two hundred million blogs worldwide, or about 3% of the world population. Of those, I’d say only a quarter of them are regularly updated.

So what makes these 50 million people think that their opinion is important enough to let the whole world know about them? I mean, when was the last time you published your diary? (Except those celebrities who seem to publish their sex lives in video format once a year)

Fame? Attention? Vanity? To show that you exist? Probably all of the above.

The best forum poster I’ve ever encountered published his thoughts as dialogues with himself. He would tell a story, often referring to himself in the third person. It would usually star a misled young man, presumably his old self, seeking advice from a mentor, presumably his new self. It was one of the most effective form of textual communication that I’ve experienced. He wasn’t telling you what you should be doing; he showed you his mistakes and what he learned so that you might not repeat them. I think that this is a great format for blog writing.

When I write something here, it’s usually a dialogue with myself; a snapshot of what I’m thinking of at the time. When I go back and revisit my past writings, I always wonder how I managed to write such crappy stuff, and then refactor the text. My writing slowly improves over time, and one day all these articles will become masterpieces.

You will get more out of blogging if you simply write for yourself.