For some reason I'm really excited about tomorrow's post. I don't usually write very far ahead of time, but this one took a little bit of extra research. You see, I got this letter from a PR firm hyping some altmed doc, and it was much more interesting than the usual similar things I get. It highlights some of the subtleties at the intersection of science-based medicine and the other stuff.
The post is going up here tomorrow morning, and at Science-Based Medicine in the afternoon.
One thing I've found about blogging, though, is a piece I really work hard on and like a lot may go over like a real dud, and a post I crank out in five minutes may end up with more hits than I've seen in months. Go figure.
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Skeptically Speaking #171 Ask A Pharmacist
Because of my involvement in this organization, I am hijacking my own blog for one day for my own nefarious purposes. To that end, I am republishing an announcement that originally appeared yesterday at a blog that a significant fraction of you are familiar with, but nowhere near all of you.
Hsien Lei is continuing her interview series at Genetics and Health. Interview #6 is with Psychologist Deborah Serani.
Given how many of you read this blog and Science-Based Medicine, I thought I should make an announcement.
That's how the blogosphere works; I had one post I spent probably fifteen hours completely devoted to, which only my subscribers really looked at. Then the little two paragraph blurb I wrote gets linked and cited on twitter, facebook, stumbleupon, and numerous other sites as if I said something revolutionary...
I don't know why this is, but it is a very interesting phenomenon. Perhaps some study could be done on this...
As a reader of 132 RSS feeds (from LOL cats to SB to XKCD to SBM) I can say with certainty that post length affects readership. Jared, your 15-hour post probably wasn't 2 paragraphs long, was it?
We live in an age of 140 character snippets, not Shakespeare.
No, but it wasn't terribly long, either
Yeah, my post tomorrow approaches Oracian length.
I really like this current post. Let's get the hit rate up really high.
Well, this one certainly is brief.
Shorter PalMD: crap post coming up tomorrow. Save yourselves the effort, and just read this one.
No?
Advertising that tomorrow's post is especially good greatly increases the odds that I will read it :)