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03/23/2004: "Fame! At Last! Kinda. Sigh."

One of my pictures has garnered a lot of hits. It started in Australia and has drawn widespread attention.

Please understand, I am happy to share. I believe that by sharing "A really really really stupid sign" with the web, by injecting another fact into the international debate, I've done an itsy bitsy part in making this a better place to live. Knowledge is power.

At the same time, it was a picture that drew the hits. There was no photo credit, no mention that there were more pictures, no mention of my feeble attempts at humor in the parent file.

(I'll be right back)

(I'm back)

I just restored the original. I felt too much like a whiney loser spewing the above drivel.

Anyway, here was my logic. I took the picture. I uploaded and provide the bandwidth for it. I felt as though that gave me the right to invite viewers to review my other pictures. From there, I would invite them to check out my blog entry about my experience at the rally.

There were concerns. People trust Mr. Blair, because Mr. Blair provides quality links. I would assume that the same is true of the other linkers. I was altering one of those links after the fact. I was, in fact, highjacking their reputations in an act of self promotion. Similarly, I was "favorite spamming" other surfers; that is, I was inserting an advertisement into a file they had previously bookmarked. The effects of my action did not fill me with pride.

And the fact is, I am getting traffic. Heck, my blog might register my 100th visitor this month (my blog counter does not count those that download individual jpg files). Lots of people are looking at that picture. Of those, some people are checking out the file with all the pictures. Some people are loading my blog. If my page chock of pictures does not draw links, the solution is not to force ads on visitors, the solution is to improve the quality of the page, next time. If my blog does not merit return readers, it means that I need practice writing, not whining.

Comments invited.
Addendum----------------------------------------------
For the month of March through 3/22 8:45 PM PT, my blog got 247 hits, the Peace March picture page got 107 hits, and the Wellstone/Bushmob picture got 1,568 hits. Had Mr. Blair linked to the entire parade page, I might be worrying about bandwidth.