Some ridiculous percentage of the views I get (all 10-30 a day of them!) come from Facebook or Twitter. They are in a sense the only real method of distribution I have. It’s interesting because while I advocate for most folks to take control over the distribution channel by using email (RSS and most other means are for all intent and purpose irrelevant now) I haven’t done it for myself. I’m not sure if I will spend the time trying to convince people to subscribe.

And if I do, is it just because I like seeing views on the site?
Is that the goal of why I write? To feed my ego when I see 40 views instead of 0?

Maybe that’s it, but I feel like if that was the case I’d polish these pieces out a bit more.

I could for example, with this post, start by explaining how historically the methods of distributions were in a few large media companies (that’s if I start with the last century) and you had to go thru them to get your message out.

Then the Internet was supposed to revolutionize this. Everyone would be on an even playing ground. And for a while things actually were better.
There were many different aggregation sites. Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and still other ways to follow sites (RSS, ATOM) and tools to do that (Insert complaint about Google Reader being discontinued here) and then finish with how it’s right back where we started with Google and Facebook controlling most of the traffic.

I guess I don’t see the point in doing that. It’s like most books. It’s a 10 page idea wrapped with 300 pages of explanations, evidences, anecdotes, the same idea repeated in different ways etc. I don’t think I’m going to sway many opinions. You already know if you agree or not or you’ll form an opinion quickly if you don’t well more facts won’t change your mind.

All that to say, would you sign up for an email subscription? What if I make a popup that blocks your screen while reading? Would that be even more enticing?