Never on Sunday
Via email, Libbie, er, Liz says:
i thought nobody read blogs on sundays!
It’s an interesting and widely distributed bit of received wisdom. I’ve seen people post things along the lines of “but I’ll post more about it on Monday, when people are actually reading.” My experience has been rather different: “nobody” posts to blogs on Sunday. On a Sunday afternoon, when I’ve got all the time in the world to carefully read and consider someone’s post, follow all the links, leave a thoughtful comment and then blog it myself, there’s nearly nothing being posted. I’ve got three unread items in SharpReader at the moment. On Monday morning, when I’ve got nearly no time for reading, much less posting, there will be a couple hundred unread items. I’ll scan through them as quickly as I can, hoping that I’ll spot the ones that really interest me, opening a couple dozen tabs in Firebird to remind me to look more closely, because I know that by lunch time there will be a couple hundred more. In all that flurry of trying to keep up, I will miss things that I’d like to see, especially in feeds with nothing but an excerpt. I will decide I don’t have time to comment. I will just guess at the content of links from the context, rather than actually follow them.
Peter Scott (in circles where people remember HYTELNET, make that THE Peter Scott) noticed my existence because I pinged weblogs.com on Thanksgiving Day, 2001 (and never you mind why I pinged on the 22nd when the entry is dated the 19th: it was a buggy scheme for pinging). Browse my archives by date, and you’ll find that most of the interesting discussions in the comments started from a post on a weekend, or a US holiday.
The bottom line is that there may well be fewer people reading on weekends and holidays, but you have the full attention of the people who are reading, and (how can I phrase this delicately? I can’t) odds are good that they are the people who are committed, dedicated, involved readers: the ones you want. I’ll take one serious blogger reading me carefully on a Sunday over twenty casual clickers of the first fifty links on weblogs.com on a Monday any time.
Now, could you please post something? Anything? Three unread items is going to make for a long, slow afternoon, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to actually get anything done instead.
Actually, I posted *three* items today.
Weekends are far better for me for posting, since during the week there’s too much contention for my mental resources.
Indeed you did. Thank you.
And although it’s partly just the fact that you’re well-connected, you posted about Blogrolling.com and TypePad, and got comments from a Six Apart employee and the Blogrolling.com employee.
I totally know what you mean. I have all this free time to surf on the weekends, but there’s no where interesting to surf to. Sure, I can see why the news sites don’t have much – all of the companies whom they report on aren’t doing business, so there’s nothing to say.
For blogs, though, there should always be at least something semi-interesting to say. Besides, if the only reason that you don’t post on the weekends is because no one is reading, that myth will just be perpetuated, and people will stop reading on the weekends, for the very reason that people stopped posting on the weekends.
I post every Sunday. Every. Sunday.
Without fail. Its my weekend catchup day. Its the time I spend uploading photos, writing about what stupid thing I did this time, and reading all the weblogs I missed out reading on saturday because I was too busy having a life.
Ahem.
What kind of life is uploading 300+ gifs instead of jpgs? Or did I mistranslate (or misremember) the day, and that was Sunday (or Friday)?
Sunday evenings are a *great* catch-up time for me, too. Its a good way to finish up the weekend by checking all my news feeds and seeing what I missed over the weekend. :) I do agree with you that the more ”serious” readers are gonna be visiting on the weekends. Its kinda nice, isn’t it? :)
I guess I need to think of it as catch-up time, rather than trying to stay caught up all week, and ending up idle. But you’re right, I do like the ”just us” feel of Sundays. And since it’s almost 2am, and I’ve got ten tabs open, plus five other apps, including a barely-started XUL app in the editor, I shouldn’t be whining about dull Sundays (which this one wasn’t, by any measure).
Week-blog-end
If I’m lucky in can finish this post before midnight: Phil Ringnalda: never on a Sunday. I agree with Phil…