So my little experiment with *Autoblogging* has attained this moment of quiet hiatus. How did I do it? What did I gain in doing it? What have I learned?
First, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, scroll down a few blogs and notice the posts that occur regularly as a timepiece—every 15 minutes. Those, along with over a day's worth of others farther back, were composed by me but not submitted in "real blogging time". Rather, the were scheduled through a *Reminder* agent that’s free to anyone with a Yahoo mail account as part of their calendaring tool. This reminder agent allows you to schedule reminders periodically and receive an alarm notification by email or as a page notification. So there’s the key. The email notification is junk—filled with advertisements and extraneous telltale text. But the pager notification goes out as a simple, concise, advertisement-free, clear text. So that’s the option I used when I addressed it to my Xanga Premium email posting account—that feature of Premium (for those with Premium, it occurs as a customizable preference along and below the Account Info, Look and Feel, etc. links) which allows you to submit posts "remotely" by email. (email posting = "remote" in *internet space*, i.e., from the xTools and browser access of the Xanga URLs; reminder alerts = "remote" in *internet time*. With space-time being a continuuum, these two "remotes" are naturally linkable.)
Although the Reminder text box in Yahoo warns that there’s a limit of 120 characters, I’m sure I exceeded that—surprisingly, without any curtailment. Another most amazing feature of the reminder system is that you can schedule posts up to every 15 minutes every day of every month of every year into and beyond the foreseeable future. Yes, I know, eventually Xanga would change or Yahoo would change a programming feature here or there and the whole apparatus would break down. But if it stands as it now stands, this tango (yes, it is a tango as the Xanga server and its autoresponder danced step-for-step with my Yahoo server and its autotransmitter) offers the prospect of virtual blogging immortality. It could go on posting pre-programmed script day after day, even beyond one’s last gasp of mortal breath. I’ve already pre-dated one post for April 2005. Will I still be alive then? If not, Xanga might yet shout forth my blogging voice with surrogate intent.
Hrm…one post every 15 minutes times 24 hours times 7 days…that’s 672 posts a week! A lot of work, no? Yet Yahoo allows you to make alarms repeating…day after day after day. So all that really needs to be done (or not, if your’e lazy) is change the content of a future alarm to match your intent—which, once the mechanism is setup, is simply a matter of paste and update—simple and convenient.
Alright. But what of the impact on Xanga as a community? What effect does automating blogs have if done repeatingly on community structure? I believe none, if done discreetly. Or possibly, even a positive one. Seems James almost always posts daily right after midnight—a ploy quite popular with many of his readers who have consciously or unconsciously come to expect a post at that time. What if he were clever enough to employ an agent such as this? Would it make a difference? Precisely not! Except that his timing would become slightly more impeccable than it already is.
By the way, James' apparent timing is an old throwback to the earliest Xanga days when the Featured Content list counted “top eProps” first, by the week, and then, by the day, with the *new day* always beginning at midnight EST. Hence, back then, if one cared, in order to maximize exposure for eligibility as the most popular post, the strategy became to post as near to midnight as possible. A relatively huge and prominent Australian contingent back then (Bluemoo, Poptardis, et. al.) had no problem with this since it was closer to their midday. But it surely turned some blogging Xangan-Americans into night owls for a while. Eventually, of course, the Xangods figured out how to make one’s post relatively-eligible for Featured Content status based on it’s own intrinsic 24 hour clock that starts ticking at whatever time the post hits the blog. And they implemented that as the current system. At that moment, the “need” (as some saw it) to program one’s blogs for optimum exposure fell aside, along with some silly contentious competitiveness. Well, at least until James “rediscovered” that posting regularly and predictably is tantamount to having a regularly scheduled program on TV. Yes. "If you program, they will watch." turns out, apparently, not to be a bad blogging strategy. Yahoo essentially is capable of assisting in this.
But the lament becomes: “It’s so impersonal—using an automated programmed agent.” Well, do you have any idea how many agents and programs are required to keep the internet, and our blogging medium here, up and running? LOTS! GOBS! The internet is essentially an agent harem—just most are not seamed and visible. (Neither would my use of them have been, if I had not been honest enough to demonstrate!) Employing them properly and discreetly is a matter of intelligence and efficiency. And it must be done. Extending their use to blogging is an implementation that I’ve here shown can work. Let all who dare now decide for themselves how to let them work for them. I have no doubt that within a few years, either Xanga or another popular blog (already?) will incorporate scheduling agents as native script. For in this medium, such innovation defines “cutting edge” and “cutting edge” goes a long, long way in assisting in a viable, continuing longevity.
But here’s my question to you: Do you feel that scheduling agents, when they arrive and command ground, will diminish community by stealing away the perception of interactive spontaneity? Or will they be supportive of community in defining for your readers a regularly scheduled, anticipatable program?
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