Yesterday I launched a new blog: Rapid Notes. It’s just hosted on a free WordPress.com account for now, and will probably stay that way.
I created this new outlet because I wanted a place to store and share the fascinating things I find online every day. I’m not going to put just any old thing up there, but it’ll be a busier blog than many of my others. Much busier. The idea is to help me identify what my real passions are by looking at the common themes of the items I post. I’ll be spending time getting the tags and categories — the taxonomy — just right. Then as the blog grows I’ll be able to look at my archives determine… well… something hopefully.
I’ve already noticed something interesting: My posts there get a lot more likes from other WordPress.com users than anything I post on this blog. Which is a bit annoying, because most of the posts here take much longer to research, write and lay out. I think it’s just because each Rapid Notes post makes for a nice little info-biscuit.
In addition, I’m going to be feeding all the Rapid Notes posts out to @foobot, a secondary Twitter account that I’ve had for a while. It’s a bot I created to auto-post when I post things in various places so I can keep the noise on my primary account to a minimum. I know, I tweet a lot anyway, but it could be worse!
halfblog.net 
WordPress.com must be happy with the relatively higher traffic, I can only assume they want to be known as a broker of attention – and are enjoying some success in that role. Isn’t that the main factor – the attention that’s already on the platform and the ease with which people can subscribe to you etc.?
They do have to compete with their own software after all.
I think so. One of my Tumblr blogs — decodering.com — gets a lot of interaction (likes, reposts), but the blog itself gets fairly low traffic compared to this one. WP.com must be trying to emulate that kind of engagement. I learned recently that you can use their reader (must be logged in to see) as a replacement for Google Reader. I’m actually tempted to do that, as I enjoy Tumblr and I’m following more and more WP.com blogs.
Hey Geoff, liking your new Rapid Notes idea (or reality!) Glad to see you’re embracing the journey in to the unknown and look forward to seeing what it is you discover later on from your posting. If you become ‘much busier’ on this new blog that now makes me ‘extra slow’ at my blogging!
Ha ha! Thanks Juliette. Don’t worry, I’m only going to be so prolific on this new blog because the posts are quick to write. More notes than posts, as the name implies. :)