Delurking

Of the blogs I follow, many of them often have ‘Delurking Days’, where the blogger will ask readers who normally don’t comment to leave a comment to say ‘Hi!” and let them know that they follow the blog.

I’m guilty of that.  I read many blogs and only comment once in a while.  I’m working on commenting more.   Baby steps 

I think I’ve learned why people do that.  I’ve learned that if I read someone’s blog using a reader, my ‘visit’ doesn’t show up as a hit on their counter.  Only if I actually visit the blog itself will I be counted.  So theoretically speaking, a person could have a thousand readers a day, but if they all used readers, it would look to the owner that no one is reading their posts.

I think that when bloggers ask people to delurk, they are trying to find out how many readers they really have.

Since starting to use Brief, there are a lot of blogs that I will read right from the reader – but there are still a bunch that I will always go to the actual blog page.  Mostly because I like their template or layout, and to me that enhances the experience of reading the post.

I have two thoughts that come out of this:

1. I feel guilty now when I read a blog post right from the reader because I’m gipping the blogger of a visitor count

2. I can now pretend that I have hundreds of people that follow my blog, but I don’t see them on my counter because they use a reader