Conversation

I think I’ve been unconsciously negatively prioritizing traffic growth on ribbonfarm. The marginal cost of traffic (overages on my hosting plan) is not worth the marginal value of new readers. It’s a kind of stock buyback. Growth without a good idea driving it is a net liability.
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Without trying to address all the points in that ribbonfarmesque deep analysis, here are some comments of a long-time fan 1/
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An initial phase of ribbonfarm (roughly up to when guest posts began being more regular) was lots of sparkling ideas of different kinds and levels, always prioritizing irony and humor despite tackling deep issues with solid references 2/
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Then a few changes happened, largely as a natural maturing as well as probably your conscious experimentation aligned to your consulting and other focus areas. To me this phase was up to when #breakingsmart and the storm format became regular 3/
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Meanwhile #tempobook and BSE had happened. The phase 2 changes were: fresh ideas and tones from others, overall mellowing down in two ways: useful advice type content and serious takes with humor and snark as optional spice. 4/
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Around the first half of phase 2 is when Gervais Principle brought explosive exposure foretelling the virality potential of premium mediocre later 5/
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Phase 2 was a good enjoyable transition where the tickled brains of phase 1 were rewarded with refactored takes on a broader range of topics. Quantity and variety shot up 6/
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