by Flemming Funch
One weird thing with blog postings and google power is that sometimes one individual post becomes, like, THE place to go for a certain subject. Just because Google has made it show on the first page for that search term. I've had a few of those, where one post over many months attracted hundreds and hundreds of people, who think that this somehow is one of THE authoritative places to go. And they leave lots of comments, and a whole little community forms.
I did a post two years ago, which was just a few paragraphs about my own experience about almost falling for a Romanian e-bay scam in buying a non-existent computer. Still, today, if you search in Google for ebay scams, my article is number 5. And there are 255 comments so far. Lots of people have shared their experiences and tips there. Even the Romanian scammers have shown up, to occasionally taunt their victims, in Romanian.
And if you search for Yamashita Treasure, you'll see my post as number 2. Which was just a mention of a review of a book. But, there too, a whole little community has formed. 167 comments. Every day treasure hunters are sharing their tips, asking for help, etc. You know, they've found some interesting underground spot in the Philippines, and they need somebody with a ground radar, or explosives expertise, or whatever. And, hey, it was just one of my thousands of blog postings. I'm not even participating. Intriguing.
A blog posting is not particularly suited to this, even though it kind of works. The comments are one long thread, and it is easy to find out how to add a new comment. But, I mean, if one had known that that posting was going to be a central gathering place for that subject, maybe one would have put some more facilities there. Like, on my ebay scam page, it would make sense to list other resources that could be helpful. So, should I go back and change my original posting? Doesn't quite make sense to me either.
But maybe one could have some additional features available that might spring into action when a certain post transforms from being just a note written at some point in time into being a *place* that people go to as a resource. A beacon that gathers people around a certain subject. If it really is a gathering place then maybe it should be linked with more of a forum, or a wiki, or a bookmarking feature, and maybe it should display resources from other places on the same subject.
It is a little odd. Meeting in an old blog post is kind of like meeting on page 207 of "Moby Dick". Maybe everything ought to be a potential meeting place.
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