People writing blogs in the form a a personal journal and brain dump far out-number the blogs written as a reasonably focussed information steam on a topic or area of interest. But, it is the latter type of blog that is far more visited than the more personal blog. There’s no right and wrong here, they are just two different beasts using the same medium for their purposes.

It goes without saying that if you’re going to express personal opinion, and frank, unpopular, or controversial ones at that, you are going to get flak for it. It’s always disturbing to get hurtful and hostile feedback, but that is part of the game when you choose to express yourself in a public forum, and allow people the luxury of direct feedback. The public is rarely even in its civility.

To the blogger trying to decide, I would say this: If you’re setting up a blog for your own personal outlet, to express yourself, or to explore your own thoughts, go ahead and be anonymous. I have no doubt that the identity aspect will have little bearing on how popular you become. But, if you’re trying to become an authoritative source of news, information or advice on anything, don’t expect me to take you as seriously if you are an unknown quantity. That’s really what this article was trying to get across.

Samir

Also, while the ‘trust your readers and they will trust you’ is heart-warming. My readership may have gone up. But in truth, coming out so to speak also brought out more than a few worms from the wood a.k.a. trolls and others completely insensitive to privacy needs. On one hand I became a more visible target for those gunning. And on the other hand, it was like my identity became an open commodity to toss around with little regard for my privacy requirements. The last takes the form of people trading around my contact details, shooting spam my way, lashing out with hurtful statements disguised as ‘honest feedback’ and being intrusive in oh-so-many other ways.

In sum, my advice to people dithering on the anonymity/openness border is to hold back and think really, very, very seriously about it.

If there are any similar topics of interest you would like covered in future articles with a similar presentation, I’m open to suggestions.

It’s always nice to know what to write next, and being told by your readers what they would like in advance is just perfect.

Take care,
Samir