Greatest hits!

 

Generate online traffic.

Online hits and traffic:  Make advertisers happy.  Put money in website coffers and blogger pockets - and keep administrators employed.  Stats aren't just ego boosters.

I've learned a lot about blogging in the past few weeks.  We think we are independent and on our own and that blogger services are free.  Truth is, there are lots of spiders attached.

I think it was last week, or the week before that a blogger called it quits - more or less indefinitely.  The site she blogs for pays attention to stats.  A post of hers showed up on a Catholic blog/news index/portal a couple of times since then.  The hits generated when that happens can be enormous.  Once in awhile I've been picked up by news portals and the hits went over 5000 a day.  Imagine what someone like Fr. Z gets on a normal day.

Think of the hits generated by writing about contentious, negative topic and stories circulating in media - especially if you have a scoop, or happen to be a well known writer.  Think of the hits generated by repeated attacks upon individuals and groups who boil over the Catholic news sites.  Think of the hits blog wars accumulate, name-calling promote, and so on. 

All to make money.

Recently I did a post with a priests name in the title - the priest was the focus of a blog war between he and another blogger.  Other bloggers, always good for the fight, got themselves involved.  Think of all the hits they generated with their smear posts.  My post was literally a nonsense post - it was random and used names in unrelated sentences, unconnected to what actually happened.  The upshot is that it became one of the most popular posts I have ever done.  The runners up for all-time hits are interesting as well:  Bradley Cooper, and KamaSutra Catholicism - they still get the hits.  It's a hoot.  But I don't care - I don't make money on them.  Somehow Blogger does though.  Nothing is free, and everything has strings - spiders - attached.

If we think we are important because we get paid, or because we get the hits and the followers, etc. - that's too bad...

Your boasting is inappropriate.
Why not rather put up with injustice?
Why not rather let yourselves be cheated?
Instead, you inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers.
Do you not know the unjust will not inherit the Kingdom of God?
Time is running out.
let those using the world
act as not using the world...
Knowledge inflates with pride,
but love builds up.*

So what is my point?  Nothing, really.  Just saying.

*Taken from this week's first readings at Mass, 1 Corinthians.