It seems like yesterday since the last blogging anniversary has come. Today, this blog finally turns 7 years old and I’m quite surprised how I managed to made it this far. With that, it’s time to reflect on the 7th year of blogging.
Compared to last year, it seems that things remained the same since the traffic did not change and remained consistent for the most part. Aside from that, I was content with how things went last year even though my free time decreased a bit in the second half of 2015 when I moved and started my new job.
As for social networking aspect, I feel that the Anime Blogosphere is not what it used to be. While I still feel upset over losing a sizable chunk of followers on Twitter last year after reaching a record of 240 or so followers, I do feel that it has become somewhat cliquish and given that not everyone follows each other makes it feels that the blogosphere has become fragmented. Not a surprise since blogging is not as big compared to 10 years ago and some of the blogs that I read in the past are not active anymore.
Aside from that, I think my 8th year of blogging will be a good one. Sure, I won’t be able to go to an Anime convention this year since I do not make the money to do and I plan on going somewhere with my parents during the summer, once I complete my first year, I will finally get a promotion and I’m certain that I will pass my first year. I think this year will be big given that I am preparing for possibly taking the JLPT N3 at the end of this year. With that, I hope that I can clear some games from my backlog, which I am using for practice.
Lastly, I plan on revamping the forums to gear it for whole fandom aside from the blogosphere. I feel that social networks are a poor platform when it comes to engaging discussion, especially with the changes Twitter is making to the timeline and such. Given that I only cover only like 3-5 shows in a given season, this should give others an opportunity to discuss other shows that I haven’t watch along with other things like video games and such. I will announce it once I finish remodeling the style and such, but feel free to join right now since I am not restarting it from scratch.
In short, I will keep on blogging that the same rate I usually do. With that, I would like to thank all my subscribers, followers and visitors who read and enjoy my posts, both old and new. I hope you will continue to support me into the future.
応援してくれてありがとうございました。
Overall Statistics for the 7th year: 1757 posts, 4582 comments, about 96 completed series.
Nice 7 long years man, keep it up. I’ll be on my 5th year in the middle of next month. Looking at how aniblogosphere is now the growth kinda dropped I think. Plus all the creative bloggers I usually like to read are gone or inactive, kinda sad moment because it’s been kinda long. There are still some who still blogs, and some even grow really big too. While mine is kinda growing but slow in terms of traffic, it’s still decent, but hasn’t been as good as how it used to be back in 2012, oh those were the days, lol!
Looking at how the anime community is right now, everyone is usually either on twitter, some dank anime meme fb page, some fb anime group, discord chat or the usually popular anime forums. Things does change in the long run, and I’m actually looking at social network aspect more when it comes to growing than the traditional way. While traditional methods are never going away anytime soon, the social network part seems to be where most are. In the end, it’s all about our content. Good content attract people, and that’s what basically is lacking mostly on mine. I’m exploring more on twitter lately, and really like the engagement I have there atm. Just need some push, and I could actually forget about my blog as whole soon, and go microblogging.
Good luck on your forum. My big goal has always been about running my own anime forum at some point. Engagement are kinda low, and such project couldn’t be achieve yet at the moment for me. Wish you all the best in your journey, and all your projects. Hopefully everything will be smooth for you. Happy 7th anniversary!
Comparing my stats throughout the years, it’s kind of discouraging to see that the growth is not what it used to. It seems that people have either gotten busy with their jobs as a good chunk of them started their blogs while they were in college. I too feel the same way given that I only have 8 hours a day aside from weekend to spend time writing posts. Still, I find it somewhat difficult on what topics to write for the editorials since I pretty much covered a good amount, which is the reason it’s a good idea to expand beyond Anime and cover related topics that is relevant to it like Japanese video games and such.
As for social networking, sure I still think that it’s a useful platform that takes little effort to get into. However, in the past few years, it has gotten rather toxic with the whole thing given the whole social justice warrior thing (a term that I would rather not use), being overly politically correct (hence is a reason why some localized video games are being censored and people being offended over everything. Also, the whole Gamergate thing which I don’t even care about since that is another can of worms. I’m the type of person that would rather avoid anything to do with this kind of thing. But the thing that pretty much make me have a negative perception towards social networking is what Youtube personality TotalBiscuit dealing with so much harassment from these social networks that he couldn’t take it and decided to quit social networking all together.
That to say, I don’t think the Anime blogosphere on social networks act this way, but it does make me think different that perhaps traditional forms of discussion like forums and blogs are better since there is at least moderation to keep the discussion civil with less possibility of trolls showing up. Then again, it depends on the community.
With that, thanks, it has been a very tough month but I still hope things will eventually get better.
A bit late but grats!
About the changes in twitter, it’s actually been retracted, although it took like a million #RIPtwitter hash tags, lol. I think at best, it’s just an optional feature. Tbh, when that incident occurs, I realized twitter is the only place I ever engaged with the fandom aside for my blog, and twitter is perhaps the only place where most people would get updated with my latest blog posts. So I would be lying if I say I wasn’t worried when quitting twitter seems like a possibility at a time.
Not to defend social media, as I understand there are negative aspects of them too, but just want to say there are positive sides to them too 🙂
Also, glad life’s been treating you well.
It seems that Twitter is having a lot of issues lately aside from the company losing CEOs and losing money but also alienating their users. The funny thing is that I saw a post in the blogosphere regarding the slow death of Twitter mostly because people are getting their accounts suspended for their political views. It seems that criticizing someone equals harassment which pretty much defies all logic. I am working on a big post on this issue and others, but I think social media in general can bring the worse out of human nature compared to the vast majority who doesn’t seem to care and just want to communicate with others.
Also, thanks.