I am in a bit philosophical mood today and so while I was surfing in Miss Dukascopy blogs in timelines I was thinking how come there are plenty of interesting, smart people, but journal is almost empty, especially looking at the number of comments, discussions and actual engagement in the contest, apart from several popular members.
This will be very honest blog post and I’m expressing my opinion with purpose of challenge people be more active and create engaging content that is not only for “Like” collection purposes, but for our own network improvement.
I hope this post will be useful for any new members of Dukascopy, especially Miss Dukascopy contest members and also for Dukascopy team itself – hope everyone will find some tips or inspiration for themselves.
I’ve been doing blogging very actively for at least 5-6 years, stopped it approximately a year and a half ago, not sure if I want to go back to it yet. However I must admit – it was very exciting and productive time!
It was Livejournal website where I found myself – it was great chance to escape and also source of inspiration and people that are interesting to know.
Actually I found plenty of interesting people all around the world and many of them have become really good virtual and some – real friends of mine! Besides if someone else from the people I already knew happened to be registered there too – that was perfect way to get to know the person better, because we never say everything what we think, but it is much easier to write it.
Livejournal was a way for me to speak what I couldn’t discuss with anyone openly, and even knowing that many people were reading it - it felt like kind of safe environment, felt like second home!
For me personally this world had the following things what kept me there for so long and I believe these are the main things for real success for any blogging website:
1. People were not trying to become popular or get more likes, they were just expressing their real feelings, pain, happiness, great moments of their lives together with really unimportant day to day live notes
2. People were actually reading other people and had willingness to leave feedback. System with “likes” kills everything – look at the Facebook! Someone may post about someone died and there will be N amount of people who will just press “Like” for this post. Of course this maybe didn’t mean that these people like that someone’s died, but that’s their LAZY feedback that can be understood wrong. Livejournal does not have “Liking” system at all. People forgot how to express their opinion, feedback in written format – that’s just degradation. Understand that this kind of blogging like Dukascopy will definitely have the aspect of “popularity” likes when people just support each other without even looking into the actual content. But if in Miss 2013 contest the proportion of not-engaged “Likes” was 70-80% , I believe Blog to succeed should must have not more than 10-15% of just support “Likes”. That’s where the CONTENT and NETWORK of people who is really interested becomes incredibly important.
3. In Livejournal I could find any content I like – was it pictures or beautiful nature or day-to-day stories, humour, news, private and very intimate blogs etc. – it was all there! It was interesting to read and because the content was that full of everything – I didn’t need to go to any other website! Bonus – I was spending enormous time there, but not only for fun – I was also reading very informative historical facts and stories, different experiments and present news/information, so got really good basis for my personal outlook and growth. I could also find quite specific content if I needed with much higher quality than using Google search. So actually thanks to the content I was getting all necessary information for me out of one single website, without annoying ads and spam – ideal business model for any website!
As for Dukascopy blog – I really hope that organizers will bring also other part of society into this thing; it is definitely not enough with girls of Miss Dukascopy contest only, it is too specific and not that engaging as it could be. Dukascopy needs somehow to recruit wider audience who will be interesting in more than just “Like” collecting.
Of course some current girls are already doing great job here, but it is far from enough.
4. Functionality of Livejournal was very high as well that made users experience really complete and pleasant. Privacy, possibility to create of your own lists of interest (as many as you like) and read them based on your mood, possibility to choose who can see any particular posts, friendship connection differentiation – Facebook has really powerful tools too here. All these things seems not that important, but believe me – in this way every Blogger feels like a king of his own choice and that’s powerful engaging component. I am updating my own journal time after time – even though I don’t post there anymore I still can control what people will see/read and so create the right impression or hide/open what I want to hide/open to wider audience. That’s how every person creates his own communities and stays with them.
5. Livejournal had plenty of possibilities to customize your blog based your own preferences. Everyone could express themselves through customized design of page, fonts, covers, positioning of fields – when I was a bit younger it was very important to me! Also the functionality was very user friendly – each could start their discussions in the comments and there was several ways to get notified, also everyone could address their comment to particular person who would get notification and even could hide it from other eyes. This made my experience very interesting as sometimes we had huge discussions in my or my friends posts and I was always able to following the way I prefer. I could also follow any new comments from any other posts, sometimes very useful tool if you find subject that is helpful and people keep commenting even more helpful things – you just receiving it all in your mailbox!
So these were main reasons that were my motivation to stay there for so long.
Of course there were also good reasons to leave, when some aspects were changed:
1. Other social website (FB) became more popular and many interesting people moved there, so it became emptier.
2. Many good features like advanced adjustable functionality became chargeable
3. Spam and a lot of advertising – pop-up windows, ad posts that were showing in the timeline even if you are not following this blog
4. If you don’t want to see spam and ads –had to pay
5. Content became more copy/paste
I really hope Dukascopy blog will become like Livejournal in its best years, but I also understand that really hard work required for that – it won’t happen by itself for sure and you, me and everyone here can make this environment much more engaging.
Thank you for your attention and special thanks who managed to read this all
Cheers!
This will be very honest blog post and I’m expressing my opinion with purpose of challenge people be more active and create engaging content that is not only for “Like” collection purposes, but for our own network improvement.
I hope this post will be useful for any new members of Dukascopy, especially Miss Dukascopy contest members and also for Dukascopy team itself – hope everyone will find some tips or inspiration for themselves.
I’ve been doing blogging very actively for at least 5-6 years, stopped it approximately a year and a half ago, not sure if I want to go back to it yet. However I must admit – it was very exciting and productive time!
It was Livejournal website where I found myself – it was great chance to escape and also source of inspiration and people that are interesting to know.
Actually I found plenty of interesting people all around the world and many of them have become really good virtual and some – real friends of mine! Besides if someone else from the people I already knew happened to be registered there too – that was perfect way to get to know the person better, because we never say everything what we think, but it is much easier to write it.
Livejournal was a way for me to speak what I couldn’t discuss with anyone openly, and even knowing that many people were reading it - it felt like kind of safe environment, felt like second home!
For me personally this world had the following things what kept me there for so long and I believe these are the main things for real success for any blogging website:
1. People were not trying to become popular or get more likes, they were just expressing their real feelings, pain, happiness, great moments of their lives together with really unimportant day to day live notes
2. People were actually reading other people and had willingness to leave feedback. System with “likes” kills everything – look at the Facebook! Someone may post about someone died and there will be N amount of people who will just press “Like” for this post. Of course this maybe didn’t mean that these people like that someone’s died, but that’s their LAZY feedback that can be understood wrong. Livejournal does not have “Liking” system at all. People forgot how to express their opinion, feedback in written format – that’s just degradation. Understand that this kind of blogging like Dukascopy will definitely have the aspect of “popularity” likes when people just support each other without even looking into the actual content. But if in Miss 2013 contest the proportion of not-engaged “Likes” was 70-80% , I believe Blog to succeed should must have not more than 10-15% of just support “Likes”. That’s where the CONTENT and NETWORK of people who is really interested becomes incredibly important.
3. In Livejournal I could find any content I like – was it pictures or beautiful nature or day-to-day stories, humour, news, private and very intimate blogs etc. – it was all there! It was interesting to read and because the content was that full of everything – I didn’t need to go to any other website! Bonus – I was spending enormous time there, but not only for fun – I was also reading very informative historical facts and stories, different experiments and present news/information, so got really good basis for my personal outlook and growth. I could also find quite specific content if I needed with much higher quality than using Google search. So actually thanks to the content I was getting all necessary information for me out of one single website, without annoying ads and spam – ideal business model for any website!
As for Dukascopy blog – I really hope that organizers will bring also other part of society into this thing; it is definitely not enough with girls of Miss Dukascopy contest only, it is too specific and not that engaging as it could be. Dukascopy needs somehow to recruit wider audience who will be interesting in more than just “Like” collecting.
Of course some current girls are already doing great job here, but it is far from enough.
4. Functionality of Livejournal was very high as well that made users experience really complete and pleasant. Privacy, possibility to create of your own lists of interest (as many as you like) and read them based on your mood, possibility to choose who can see any particular posts, friendship connection differentiation – Facebook has really powerful tools too here. All these things seems not that important, but believe me – in this way every Blogger feels like a king of his own choice and that’s powerful engaging component. I am updating my own journal time after time – even though I don’t post there anymore I still can control what people will see/read and so create the right impression or hide/open what I want to hide/open to wider audience. That’s how every person creates his own communities and stays with them.
5. Livejournal had plenty of possibilities to customize your blog based your own preferences. Everyone could express themselves through customized design of page, fonts, covers, positioning of fields – when I was a bit younger it was very important to me! Also the functionality was very user friendly – each could start their discussions in the comments and there was several ways to get notified, also everyone could address their comment to particular person who would get notification and even could hide it from other eyes. This made my experience very interesting as sometimes we had huge discussions in my or my friends posts and I was always able to following the way I prefer. I could also follow any new comments from any other posts, sometimes very useful tool if you find subject that is helpful and people keep commenting even more helpful things – you just receiving it all in your mailbox!
So these were main reasons that were my motivation to stay there for so long.
Of course there were also good reasons to leave, when some aspects were changed:
1. Other social website (FB) became more popular and many interesting people moved there, so it became emptier.
2. Many good features like advanced adjustable functionality became chargeable
3. Spam and a lot of advertising – pop-up windows, ad posts that were showing in the timeline even if you are not following this blog
4. If you don’t want to see spam and ads –had to pay
5. Content became more copy/paste
I really hope Dukascopy blog will become like Livejournal in its best years, but I also understand that really hard work required for that – it won’t happen by itself for sure and you, me and everyone here can make this environment much more engaging.
Thank you for your attention and special thanks who managed to read this all
Cheers!