One of my favourite and regular UK bloggers, Jonathan Beckett had gone rather quiet recently so I assumed he must have moved blogging platform the the Nth time, gone on holiday or possibly his feed was screwed without his knowledge so I sent him a polite email asking ‘Dead or just resting ?’ and he informed me he’d intentionally changed blog address without telling anyone.
I think this sudden, unannounced, abrupt loss of service is an excellent idea for all bloggers - it’s a bit like writing ‘I love small, fresh, juicy satsumas’ buried deep in the middle of a technical report to be delivered to a client or pausing for 5 minutes, with your face in your hands, during a presentation at Oracle Open World. It helps to focus the mind and check whether anyone is actually reading or listening.
In fact, this method of social network suicide followed by starting again from zero and organic gardening is a strategy I have used more than once during my blogging lifetime. The only difference is my stats genuinely reverted to zero but I wasn’t inundated with curious Tweets, scribbling on my Facebook wall, IM’s and concerned email messages enquiring about my state of mind and asking for details of the new blog feed.
I was greeted a wall of silence, pierced only by a solitary email: ‘I simply adore Clementines'.