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There are so many factors people use to statistically define what makes a blog successful: average number of comments per entry, amount of visitors per day, number of feed subscribers, Google PageRank rating… the list can get quite lengthy. And while those are all important factors when it comes to measuring a blog’s popularity and success, just how much weight should these factors be given?

I’ll admit that sometimes I get disheartened when I check my blog’s stats and see that my number of feed subscribers has fallen or that the amount of visitors for a particular day drastically decreased compared to my average amount. Most of the time I write it off as a slow day in the blogosphere or that no one was interested in my latest blog entry. However, there are also days when my stats spike dramatically, leading me to believe that that day was either super active in the blogosphere or I wrote an incredibly captivating entry. A lot of the reasoning behind high/low numbers depend on what visitors are attracted to in a blog, too.

This all leads me to this question: how does one judge whether or not a blog is a “success”? Is it a quality over quantity type of thing or do numbers weigh more heavily in the bigger picture? I don’t necessarily mean how does one judge one’s own blog and if it’s a success or not, but blogs in general. There’s going to be some sort of correlation between lots of traffic and quality entries to read of course, but that creates another question: do bloggers write interesting entries to attract visitors both new and old or are visitors attracted to a blog because of (sometimes already existing) good quality entries?

(Which came first, the chicken or the egg?)

Obviously, I pay way too much attention and over think things when it comes to blogs, but it’s tough to figure out these kinds of things when the criteria are so subjective.

Almost everyone who has a Facebook account has heard of the Farmville application. Essentially, it’s a virtual farm where Facebook users can grow crops, tend to animals, and build a farm. You can visit your friends’ farms and watch your own farm slowly change from a pathetic-looking plot of grass to an expansive, thriving farm.

Personally, I don’t play Farmville, but that doesn’t mean I’m not curious about this game that over half of my friends are crazy about. There has been a lot of debate in my group of friends about the merits of Farmville, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two types of people in this world: people that Farmville, and people that don’t. There is just no other explanation for this intense, obsessive Facebook app. It’s kind of like the Jetman craze two years ago, which makes me wonder what up and coming app will be the next big thing!

Question of the Week: Do you Farmville?

It’s Doppelgänger Week on Facebook (well, more like Doppelgänger Now That It’s Popular It Won’t Go Away on Facebook). Even though I’m not one to have defaults that feature photos of people/objects other than myself, I was curious to see who my celebrity doppelgänger was.

According to MyHeritage’s face recognition software, my doppelgänger is…

Zhang Ziyi, the Chinese actress best known for her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; House of Flying Daggers; and Memoirs of a Geisha!¹

I don’t think I look that much like her, but apparently MyHeritage does. The biggest difference between me and Ziyi is that she’s 100% Asian while I’m only half. Most people think I don’t even look half-Asian, maybe a quarter, so I’m not sure how accurate MyHeritage’s 97% similarity rating is. I’d absolutely love to have her complexion, though. The girl’s skin is flawless!

1. Photo source: here. [↩]