Shelley was kind enough to link to Listics in a recent post of hers that welcomed Mark Pilgrim back to blogalalia.  The post pointed to a number of other bloggers, including Jonathan Delacour and Board-man Mike.  Jonathan and Mark both surfaced immediately in that comment thread, which tells you a little about how a lot of people track Shelley’s work.

Thank you for the link, Shelley.  I’m wondering where Yule is too.

I wonder if I have whacked the people who were already subscribed by turning on a Feedburner feed…

Publishing moved to the net in the early nineties. ‘zines flourished. Sometime in the next four or five years, blogs crowded out ‘zines. The interactivity of blogs led to the rise of social networking. The “Vanity Press” has been legitimized and the quality of self publishing is on the rise. Whole books published by major houses are released on the web before they appear in print. Cory Doctorow and Chris Locke are two authors who come to mind who use this model, each in his own way.

Writers are not a huge part of the population. Literacy implies we have the technical skills associated with both reading and writing, but to be a “writer” requires discipline, skill and intention. I have no clue where to find the data to prove this, but I believe that the keyboards and screens of the internet-connected have enabled a much broader class and a far higher population of writers than has ever before existed. This seems true both in real numbers and as a percentage of the population. Not all bloggers are good writers, but blogging itself is a means of getting them there. The immediate feedback of seeing one’s own work posted is an incentive to do more, to do better. The social feedback, the conversational aspect of others posting and linking and yet others commenting, provides further incentives to continue.

100 Bloggers is an experimental community of writers. Most of us maintain other blogs elsewhere. Our experiment has been underway for over a year. This posting by Robert Paterson describes early days and provides a link to the 100 Bloggers original blog. That blog provides a link to the next location, which provides a link to the new site. We’ve been sputtering along, finding a common vision and losing it, gathering like-minded people and watching them fall away. Troy Worman provides leadership in this growing circle. Contact him if you’d like to join us.

cross posted at 100 Bloggers