Watched this fine movie yesterday. There are lots of good reviews talking about the plot, play and the actors. So I’m not going to talk a lot about it here. Short summary of the movie for those that can’t be bothered to check out IMDB or similar:
Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a young woman, working at a government institution, and gradually getting bored with her life. She’s meeting her much successful (career wise) friends and realising that there’s nothing interesting or exciting happening in her life. She likes cooking and adores Julia Child (Meryl Streep), a cooking legend. So Julie decides to go through Julia’s cooking book and try all recipes, over 500. And just to make sure, she’s set a tight deadline – 1 year. Part of the challenge is to blog this experience.
The movie has a second line, which tells Julia’s story as well. Julia is in Paris, just after the war, where her husband was on an assignment. She’s bored, trying to find something to do. And she discovered french cuisine classes. She fully devotes herself to mastering the art of cooking. She meets new friends and agrees to work on a cook book – French cuisine for Americans.
Now back to what I wanted to talk about. Blogging. Well, I guess it’s one of the first movies that mention blogging, and kind of have it at the first plane. What’s also interesting, the whole blogging business is seen as a cheap alternative to book writing. You can’t get it wrong, nor there are editors to reject your writing. Just start writing and they will come. Well, sort of. First comment on the blog was from Julie’s mom, advising to stop doing this, at least according to the movie…
What’s really reassuring is Julie’s attitude towards blogging at the beginning. Guess it’s quite similar to what everyone else who starts blogging – “Is there anybody out there?”, “Will somebody contact me?”, “Does that benefit anyone at all?” or “Am I doing all this just for myself?”. Even the tagline was “Nobody here but us servantless American cooks…”. Nobody…
There are lots of SEO gurus out there who would argue that one can gain an army of followers/readers just by purchasing their super system book that’ll make wonders in just 7 days for a mere $19.99 making the website google friendly and placing keywords into the right places. Rubbish, I tell you. It ain’t gonna happen. So what this movie really tells us (or at least told me) – forget about the readers, in the beginning it’s all going to be about talking into the void. Couple of months really, if not longer, before one will get a concise stream of (everyday) readers/fans. Just do what you like and keep on blogging. Be very specific and do not wander away from the track. It’s not a book, so there’s some freedom. Julie even talks about her upset tummy in one post (is that real? I couldn’t find it on the original blog, but the navigation there is horrible, so no wonder).
So are the general purpose blogs doomed? You know, ones that talk pretty much about everything? I don’t know. I suppose, Twitter became so popular* simple because it allows people to just spit everything that they have on their minds out. Blogs require more attention and dedication. If I want to know who’s doing what at this very moment I’d follow them on Twitter, and wouldn’t read their blog. On the other hand Twittering is more about ”I farted”, “the banana I ate this morning was awful”, etc. And the blogs allow to elaborate more about the things. But then again, who’d be interested in my personal activities apart from my relatives?
Therefore blogs that talk (from a personal point of view) about specific things (such as cooking, traveling, computers, programming, cars, etc) are popular. So is that the way to go? May be if you want more hit’s on the “donate” button. But definitely it’s a “no” for me, as I have more that one specific interest. I’m not going to talk about my personal things, but I will definitely not concentrating on one area either. We shall see where this is going to get me to, but I’ll give it a go.
Bit unstructured post about nothing in particular, don’t you think?… That was done on purpose… 
UPDATE Another “speciality” blog that became really popular, but hasn’t been created on purpose, it was just as a “byproduct” of the main activity.
*) Personally I think it’s not that popular as it may seem. Since the message “you can make money on Twitter” got out, it’s more of a social network for various robots (Hey, Tweeter directors, you still think API was a good idea?)
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This post needs some upside-down sentences, just to spice things up. Don’t you think? I mean what the hell, no one’s reading it anyway…
haha, i know, i know!
truth is, i was testing how well amazon localisation plugin works, so i had to write something, can’t just put some links and leave them. so now i have two links and a post…
and the lesson i learned was – some codes are country specific. which is a bugger, because the plugin would replace amazon url, and the local amazon shop would simply not have the product… for example dvd is not available in uk.