Updating the Blog Links

While in Las Vegas, I not only attended Wilhelm Arcturus' presentation, "Blogging New Eden", but got to hang out with him as well.  For those not aware, he is one of the most prolific bloggers writing about EVE Online and his blog, The Ancient Gaming Noob, is not even dedicated to EVE. And he's been at it for a very long time. Whereas I've been lucky to write two blog posts a week over the last two years, Wilhelm cranks out almost one every day.

I'm trying to increase my output since I switched my phone service to an unlimited data plan (and saved $25/month!) and use the phone as a mobile hotspot. But Wilhelm's presentation highlighting the decline of the original EVE Blogpack got me to thinking about updating the links on the blog. If I really want to know what people are thinking, I need to have someplace to see what's happening.

Apparently someone slipped something into the drinking supply, because the day after Wilhelm's presentation, Blagpuss wrote a post about how many new bloggers attracted by Blaugust had stuck with blogging. We can't credit Wilhelm, though. Gevlon posted about looking for new writers to add to his blog roll. The number of people attracted to blogging by Blaugust and stopped closely aligned with the dropout rate from the EVE Blog Pack. The retention rate of bloggers seems similar to the retention rate of new players in EVE Online.

In an age of web sites needing to adapt to mobile devices, blog rolls seem a bit old-fashioned. Combined with feed readers, I imagine not that many people actually visit the blog to see any work I put into curating the lists. So for a couple of years I let the lists go older and staler. A couple of nights ago I updated the feeds to something that makes the feeds look half-way cared for.

Maybe sometime in the future I'll wax on about the benefits of blogging. As the internet consolidates, the old networks of blogs fell by the wayside. Too bad, really, given how some of the tech giants act. I've deleted the Facebook account associated with the blog because I just couldn't abide by what I saw happening in Zuckerburg's playground. I can't do the same for Alphabet as my technical needs are too closely bound to Google. As long as I keep everything gaming related, though, I should have no issues.