Saturday, November 19, 2005
What Is A Blog Carnival?
I am cross-posting this from the new Carnival of the Capitalists blog, which is about to go live and supplant the old CotC pages, even while still under construction. I’m not sure I’ve yet seen a better explanation of blog carnivals:
A carnival is a regular collection of links to blog posts, often on a particular topic or area of interest.
Usually someone different hosts each time, with the carnival traveling from blog to blog. Usually the posts included are self-submitted by the authors. Usually the interval for editions of a particular carnival is weekly.
Much of blogging is about being seen; getting links and thus readers. Being in carnivals is a way of getting extra links, and presumably some number of additional readers seeing at least one post. Call it a form of viral self-promotion.
For the readers, it’s the inverse. You have a chance to see posts on blogs you might not otherwise have read. Generally the spirit of carnivals is to enter a particularly good post, so in many cases you are seeing the better work of that author and get an idea whether to add them to your regular reads. A carnival is an easy way to explore and break out of a rut of reading the same blogs all the time. It can also be a way to learn about a topic, or to keep up on what’s currently being said “out there.”
For the host, it can be a lot of work. Most carnivals, in traditional open spirit, do not limit the number of entries included, filtering out mainly what is off-topic or, increasingly lately, spam. However, it is a chance to be noticed and to self-promote, more so than merely being an entrant linked by the carnival. It generates a burst of traffic that can be a real rush to witness. Depending how flexible the format of a carnival, it can be your chance to put your own stamp on it, “show ‘em how it’s done.”