Name:Derek Country:United States State:Virginia Metro:Lynchburg Birthday:2/25/1983 Gender:Male
Interests:The Bible, Reading, Computer Gaming, Law and Law Enforcement, Driving, Camping, Hiking. Expertise:Practice makes perfect, still not an expert at anything except being myself. =o) Occupation:Student
Yes, the time has come to close this chapter of my blogging life. Xanga has been a good friend to me, and it introduced me to the blogging biosphere. I have had this site now for over 4 years, but I must now close the door. The main reason being that I no longer find Xanga offers me what I want in a blog. In order to get full control over your blog, you either have to use hacks or pay for Xanga Premium. Why pay for something you can get free? I use gmail as my email client, and blogger is part of Google. It is much easier to manage, and offers way more options than Xanga. So, alas, I bid Xanga farwell for now. Perhaps if Xanga offers premium services for free in the future, along with ftp publishing and personal domains, I may come back.
I have been utilizing xanga's footprint feature to conduct an experiment and broaden my demographic. Basically, I am searching for and visiting xangas (while signed in, of course) which are the complete antithesis of mine. I want to see how many different types of people I can get on here. I have been searching for xangas, blogrings, photos, videos, and audios. I have not yet done pulses. After I do that, I simply visit as many as I can on a daily basis. Then I see how many footprints I get in return from these sites. My rationale behind this is to see if the footprints feature alone is a viable tool for not only seeing who has visited your site, but also for generating traffic. It saves a lot of time and effort not having to comment on every site you visit.
Some kinks I am trying to work out:
Since I am utilizing some very generic search terms, I tend to visit the same sites a plethora of times. Why? Well, in blogrings, the default sorting method is for sites which are the most recently updated. So, depending on how often people update their sites, I end up visiting some sites twice. Another kink is blocking. Xanga has some very good privacy features, and some people simply block anyone who thinks differently than they do. Despite the fact that I have not left any comments on these sites, once people visit my site and see it doesn't have anything to do with sex, death, or whatever...I am blocked. Oh well, narrow minds I guess.
So, what have I learned?
I have learned there are way, way too many sex addicts who aren't even adults. The effects of porn on mainstream society are very real and are going to only get worse. And for those who want to debate me on whether or not porn is a healthy form of free sexual expression for children, I accept your challenge. I also have learned that there is quite a huge Christian subculture out there who are very open to discussing the finer points of theology, but very few who openly and actively share their faith with those around them. They are more concerned with winning an argument than with bringing lost souls to Christ. I am still learning quite a bit, so check back often...
Just a youtube video I did regarding the obscene amounts of "auto start" videos and audios on people's pages. (Video Below) If you are viewing this via an RSS feed or Facebook, please visit www.xanga.com/mpboy229.