Some Thoughts on a Methodist Experiment
Kevin Watson has provided an update on his social media experiment with a YouTube video, which I posted here, and frankly I’m a bit disappointed.
Now I know that many of us in the blogosphere, and similarly in the methoblogosphere, are wary of getting roped in to publicize something, such as Kevin Watson’s book. I also found some weaknesses in the video itself, though I’m hardly an expert on such things. When I make a YouTube video it has me talking, and well, more of me talking.
Having said that, however, my video Why I Hate the KJV has 3,456 views and 227 comments, despite being much lower quality than the video we were promoting in the experiment. Don’t compare those numbers directly, however, because my video was posted April 8, 2008. On the other hand, about 1500 of those views occurred within the first couple of weeks. If you look at my other videos, however, about 200 views is great, and many stay in the low double digits. But those videos are not subject to an experiment, and lack any quality production–I do them in my office on a home machine.
My question to the Methoblogosphere is whether we would every be willing to be harnessed just a little bit to discuss a particular topic. The comments could be positive, negative, neutral, or any other adjective (other than abusive, I hope!), but we could really discuss some single topic. I’m not going to start an experiment, but the idea would be to seriously and broadly discuss a single topic as the Methoblogosphere. No, I’m not expecting 100% participation, but it seems like it could be bigger than this.
I’m also well aware that we won’t agree, and that most of us, including myself, do not wish to be harnessed as a publicity engine for Nashville. On the other hand, if Nashville puts out a program, wouldn’t it be nice if people could get on the web and find comments from a variety of perspectives when they’re deciding whether to use it in their church? (Hint to Nashville: Send me a free copy and I’ll review it!)
My interest, however, is more in seeing some more elements of community and connection in the Methoblogosphere. Am I nuts, or is there some potential in here somewhere? I have no illusions that I’ve got anything like a fully fleshed and clothed idea here. Let the criticism fly!
I think the Watson experiment shows that just posting stuff around does not stimulate interest. Especially when:
1) Nearly all the posts I saw said something like, “Someone is doing this experiment, so I’m posting this, too.” Not a lot of enthusiasm there.
2) A lot of Methodist blogs are not well networked outside the Methoblogosphere. My blog, for instance, gets very few comments that are not from other Methobloggers. The viewership of my blog may be slightly larger, but clearly having an echo chamber post the same YouTube clip is not going to increase viewership of the clip.
Your blog has much wider readership, but they come to your blog because you have created a niche of sorts. There are some types of things that your regular readers probably expect to see you write about. If you go off those topics, I would imagine your readership does not join you there.
That said, I think trying to draw us into conversation and getting different people thinking and writing about common topics is intriguing. A lot of that happens now by the organic and decentralized nature of the blogosphere. Trying to organize the blogosphere may be a daunting challenge.
John-You make several very good points, and I agree. As I think I noted in my original post (which read much like you say–it’s an experiment so here goes), that I would have to be revved up about the topic.
The Methoblog would probably have to try to gently guide the idea of blogging on a particular topic through the methoblogosphere. It would be interesting to see how it would work.
I’m fairly certain that simply providing a video or some similar item from a UM agency wouldn’t light things up. And 600 hits on YouTube isn’t enough to get the juices flowing…