BlogShares (what’s the point?)
Links 07/04/2003 |I just got an e-mail from Blogshares telling me that I’d been given 50 shares of The Book of FSCK as Jonas empties his portfolio. This gives me a cash balance of $1,106.43, and my portfolio totals $152,415.64 with shares in four blogs (two of which are mine). The funny thing is, I really haven’t got the faintest clue what all that means.
I signed up for BlogShares a few months ago, when it first appeared on the weblog scene. At the time, I didn’t bother making any sort of announcement about it — I just added the BlogShares button to my site, figuring that I’d come back to it later and figure it all out. The thing is, since then, I’ve more or less just ignored it — I’ve stopped in a time or two and poked around at my statistics, but little to none of them ever made much sense to me. So, I just kept ignoring it.
End result? Not the foggiest! My share price seems to have been fairly stable, though my valuation has been bouncing up and down drastically. Why? Beats me. It’s all voodoo, as far as I can tell. Kirsten and D have both given me a bit of advice from time to time, but none of it ever really sunk into my head. Guess it’s a good thing I don’t try to play the real stock market, huh? 
Jonas seems to be pulling out due to the introduction of artefacts. What they are or what they do to the game, though, I can’t tell you, the explanation made just as much sense to me as the rest of this whole thing.
I guess for now, I’ll just keep ignoring it. It doesn’t seem to be helping or hurting me — it’s all funny money, anyway — and it gives me something to poke at when I’m bored.
Hm.
<poke>
<poke>
Nope. Still clueless.
[See also: Gonna need a really big mop… | Butterfly alphabets, and much more | Poke | Progress: Related Entries | More protest songs ]
One Response to “BlogShares (what’s the point?)”
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schinji
dang
Cheryl
Bertamum
Michael Hanscom
July 4th, 2003 at 10:47 am
In the beginning (that’s after “earth, man, etc…”) blogshares was a fun way to find new weblogs, get in contact with other webloggers, maybe show someone you liked his/her weblog, and gauge how much interest there really was into ones writings. It was an ego + community thing, and I’m a huuuuge fan of ego plus community. Today it’s a competitive thing where the share buyers and sellers don’t give a crapinsky about your weblog, don’t even read it, or know what it is, and are in the whole thing for real money (blogshares sell for money, now, and there are contests going on, etc.). It’s not longer fun, has nothing to do with weblogs anymore (other than the fact that links play a marginal role in valuations), and is buggy (clusterfsck.net and fsck.clusterfsck.net are the same website, the “alternative URL suggests as much, yet blogshares still treats both as individual websites, and won’t let anyone take control over the second URL).
That’s it. Maybe someone else wants to play and needs some stock/capital to play with - and that’s why I am shelling out my stock. Plus a thin spread stock ownership kills artefact buyouts