About The Sense Of Awards Between Bloggers

In the last time I was oftenly thinking about the awards I get from other bloggers and which are becoming more every day overwhelming the blogsphere, indeed a phenomenous that could be called perfectly inflationary, and like any inflation, it makes that the real value of those prices or awards is falling steadily.

Obviously, those awards are not really prices but demonstrations of interest, friendship or empathy under bloggers, and more than awards they are becoming a real punishment as they are always granted with the condition to comment the award received with an entry on your own blog and to distribute them under several blogs -sometimes establishing a crazy number like 15- all chosen by the blogger. The sum of awards granted makes that the award itself loses much more its sense. Some blogs receive the same award several times, and the work related with entries and distribution becomes a charge.

The blog Doramas has published some really negative comments on that matter, and I do not agree with all of them. When I received the first awards of this type, I began thinking about the question if this distribution labour is compensated. So far, I came to the conclusion that in a certain way there is a compensation, and the reasons are the following ones:

1. To get an award from another blogger means that he/she appreciates what you are writing in your blog.

2. The mention of your blog together with its link supposes more visits, more readers and that your blog will become better known in the blogsphere. The fact that your blog gets better diffusion being mentioned by other blogs is indeed an advantage, especially taking in account that every greater city counts easily several thousands of blogs about many different topics. The blog that got the award, proceeds in the same way with blogs appreciated by its author making them known under its readers. I made the experience by myself that I found many interesting blogs I didn't know before, which I like to read from time to time and to include in my link list.

On the other hand -and in spite of those two advantages- it is true that generally those awards guard less relationship with the blog's contents and have nothing to do with a real award, because they are created without any aspiration to be distinctions for the high quality of certain blogs. Its multiplication after each distribution (if granted to 15 blogs each time, in two steps there will be 225 blogs that own this award) the value of those awards is going to disappear. That's the same thing when a complete class in school gets a general approval without considerations about the level of knowledge of the pupils.

Only an award that is granted to a limited number of blogs and without the duty to be distributed under several other blogs would be a real recognition of the blogger's work and not a type of punishment if you take in account the time you have to spend for further distribution. The reception of several awards of this type each month becomes a new manner of slavery and demotivation: The writing of an entry about the award -something that has no relationship with the topics a blogger wants to express in his blog- needs at least half an hour; after that you need the same time to look for the blogs to select, and after that you need time to notify the award to the other bloggers (as we shall not know their e-Mail addresses), so that you will loose some two hours for all the procedure everytime you get an award or two. May be that this time investment will be compensated by getting new readers and visits to your blogs, and by the way your ranking position will become better, but all that time could be better used for reading blogs of your interest.

In the blog dosbit I have found a graphic description of the blogger's life, and I think it is a good explanation for the problem reported by Technorati about the high rate of dead blogs. The author of the graphics is Paul Bredshaw. I copied the five images intto this entry. The inflation of bologger awards may cause the death of many blogs by overcharging the bloggers who will loose interest on writing. Possibly, the best way to make known the blogs you like is to include them in your link lists and to write something about them. By the way, you have not to use your restricted time with awards that are oftenly being created without any convincing criteria.

So far, after thinking a bit more about this dilema, I will follow the proposal of Doramas and answer the awards I received by mentioning them in my award album on my blog.

It is common to the whole blogsphere that blogs are in permanent evolution. There will appear always new ideas, but some of them will be substituted by others. Things that seemed to be useful at the beginning, suddenly are going to be a charge without real results. We all have to make progress, to innovate and to look for new ways of developing our activities. The blogger activity is very useful, because it developes and consolidates the liberty to express your opinions without any limitations. It is useful as it is creating new ways to get in touch with other people by expressing your opinions through articles or comments. That idea of blogger awards now has reached its limits. Quantity lowers quality and could cause an implosion if it gets out of control. It will be better to be innovators when searching for new manners of mutual recognition. Our time is limited and our work is unpayable, so we should not make a bad use of it.