When I started this Blog I never really wanted to get involved in writing about Blog’s. You may find this ironic, but I detest the Blog. Six times out of ten Blog’s are full of opinionated shit that people use to back-up their own opinions. One only has to check the Digg website to see how users will use a Blog as a reference tool for their own opinions, regardless of if it could ever be true. Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic Blog’s out there, but they are very hard to come by.

Today, my beef is not about Quality Control in Blog Content, but with Blog layouts.

Another thing you may find ironic is that I generally do not like advertising on Blog’s. I don’t disagree with a Blog containing advertising, but it is often complete overkill on screen real estate. Unlike with any other website where content can typically be interactive and dynamic, a Blog is episodic and when a user comes to a Blog they are only looking for content. I have no other reason to visit any Blog other than to read their old or new content. A lot of Blog’s are lucky to have users read through all of their posts, and if you are getting these users you’re doing a good job.

Advertising on a Blog is a heated subject as to what will bring the most revenue, although many popular Blog owners have taken a different approach; what will disrupt users less? This is the approach I love, and Coding Horror represents it beautifully. His small text-adverts approach in his sidebar works well, and I often find myself looking to see what I can find there that may be of use to me. As a very small Blog, I’ve decided on a similar approach in my side-bar, so only links are shown. Even though I don’t get many users I get a reasonable number of clicks, and I like to believe that many of these clicks come from users that want to view what they click. Whilst like every student I desperately need money I have no crowd to sell to, so I’m leaving my Blog fairly clean in the hope that those lucky users that find me will refer others and come back.

That being said, most typical Blog’s will stuff their Blog’s with affiliate links and product placements, sometimes with several squares for several products. On top of this, websites are sporting these new-fangled things called Widgets. Whilst sometimes these things can be useful, a lot of them are used again for, you guess it, advertising.

Sometimes, it feels like the typical Blogger is the more grown-up version of the typical MySpace user.

The signs are all there, opinionated ‘news’ about their lives, customised layout that can be found on loads of other sites, and most of all, thousands of little flashy images, quizzes and widget-y crap.

While many readers of this Blog may flee in disgust, I feel I must say that I don’t mean to target Widgets or Advertising. Blog owners are entitled to put whatever they want on their websites, but most people get too carried away in what they add to their websites. In a perfect world a Blog would only ever be about content, but advertising is a necessary evil. I just hope that most Blogger’s see the need to tone it down a bit.