I always find it interesting to discover why people choose the blogs they follow and/or read regularly. Â In my case, I have three general criteria, the order of which is subject to mood and whim. Â I suspect that others have very different criteria.
One of my criteria is humor (even unintentional). Â I am a big fan of those who can poke fun at their day to day lives and the oddities of modern life. Â Given that I have a writing style that is stiff, formal, and pedantic – you might say I enjoy reading the opposite of what I write. {*grin*}
Another criteria is decent writing skills. Â By that I mean that sentences are well formed, nouns are used appropriately, and verbs exist. Â I am old enough not to enjoy blogs written in the style of texts or matchbook stenography school adds. I.e., if u cn rd ths, u cn mk $.
Yet another criteria is true geekiness or nerdiness.  Given I have spent most of my  adult career involved with science, technology and software development, I have a deep fondness for most things geek.  I am not, however, a big fan of “gadget of the day” blogs.  I have entirely too many gadgets already.  I would like to see the development of a master gadget – one the size of a modern cell phone with a pop-out full size keyboard, an IMAX sized holographic screen, the computing power of a supercomputer, and 3 days of battery life.  Oh, and it should weigh little and cost less. Got one for me? {*grin*}
A final criteria is regularity. Â I like a blog to have at least a couple of entries per week. Â Otherwise I tend to loose my understanding of the style and skills of the author. Â That continuity is critical for my enjoyment of most blogs, since they build on a sense of history and shared disclosure of experience.
I have been reading and following blogs since they first came of age, but until this beast have resisted the temptation to have a public non-technical blog. Â Now you get to suffer for my lack of will power! Â The list of blogs I follow and/or read is constantly changing. Â When I find a blog that I like, I usually then investigate the blogs the author follows. Â My investigation is somewhat trivial, consisting of reading the last three posts and then making a yea or nay decision to follow or add to my reader list. Â Any time the posts from any blog seem to be less interesting over a week or so, it then gets pruned from my reading list.
How do you chose the blogs you follow/read?