Julie & Julia, Part 2

For those of you who read this week's earlier review of Julie & Julia, I'm halfheartedly apologizing for writing more about Julie Powell and her project today. But only halfheartedly because the book actually did get me thinking.

Julie Powell started her project back in 2004 (don't quote me on that but... we know at least it was after 2001). Sure, the Internet was well established and folks had blogs, forums, live journals, etc., but the prevalence and saturation of blogs was, perhaps, not quite so complete as say, now.

Julie doesn't go into detail about the promotion she did behind her blog (if any) or how she marketed it, spread the word, etc. but I wonder how much she did do around that. Was she lucky - picked the right topic, right time, etc.? Or did she work hard to get some traffic behind her blog.

Clearly my interest on this topic is only partially hypothetical. I admit that I do some promotion around Quitsville but primarily, I'm talking to my friends. I daydream about spreading the word and getting more followers/readers, but I don't spend a lot of time on that dream. With multiple blogs out there for every user of the Internet (I bet you didn't even know this is NOT my only blog!) it's hard to rate with today's Web 2.0 users. Do you have to scroll to read the whole post? I'm out. Is there a page 2? Ditto on that. As we become more and better connected, one could argue that we're less interested in depth than we are in breadth.

I'm the first to admit that my Google Reader is chock full at all times. I subscribe to probably hundreds of RSS feeds at this point and that 1000+ designation besides any of my folders is becoming quite the familiar sight indeed. Do I need all of these feeds? No, of course not.

That said, don't unsubscribe from Quitsville! In fact, I wouldn't say no if you wanted to tell others about the blog.

For those of you who are interested, Julie Powell still lives on the blogosphere at JuliePowell.Blogspot and you can read at least some of the original Julie/Julia Project from back in the day on Salon.