Seems like every second blog is talking about BlogExplosion. You know the kind of thing——"Hey, you should check out BE. It's really cool. I'm getting hundreds of hits a week. You should sign up. You really should. Blah-de-blah-de-blah".
And of course, that's all basically true. BlogExplosion drives half a person to eebahgum for every blog I visit. That half a person has to hang around for at least 30 seconds before moving on, but of course, he or she doesn't have to read a single word, especially if using a nifty tabbed browser like Firefox.
So when is a hit not a hit? Ultimately the acid test of whether anyone's reading is still the number of people who leave comments, subscribe or blogroll me. BlogEx has helped with all those a little, which is good, and worthy of recommendation, but I'd be surprised if more than 10% of BlogExers actually read as far as my banner. That's not a criticism of BlogEx users, just an observation of the way the system works.
I admit it, I'm a traffic whore. I like to go and check my stats 37,000 times a second, and when I see some hits I get a little welling of excitement. But then when I see that they're mostly from BlogEx, it's always a little deflating.
If there's a moral to this blog, it's this: by all means sign up for BlogExplosion, and browse with whatever enthusiasm takes your fancy, but if you really want to support the Blogosphere (and therefore your own blog) then you can do that best by scattering your erudite comments about with abandon. Anything else is ultimately a 'get hits quick scheme'.
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