It’s been about a year since I last posted one of these things. Speed Force has grown a lot in that time. I’ve tried to have something new on a daily basis, and over a year and a half the site has grown to a total of 824 posts. It’s also expanded past the blog itself, with nearly 3,000 tweets on Twitter @SpeedForceOrg and with a fan page on Facebook.
Speed Force’s audience has grown a lot too, with an average of 989 views per day (up from 469 a year earlier), 220 fans on Facebook, over 400 followers on Twitter…and almost 3,000 comments! Thank you, everyone!
On the downside: I’m kind of stressed out. The Flash is still in limbo after all this time, and while we have an unofficial launch date, DC has continued to change their plans for the character. I’ve also been finding DC’s output more frustrating and less interesting over the past few years, and I don’t want this to turn into a 24/7 rant station.
So here’s what I’m doing to avoid burning out.
First, I’ll be posting a little less often. I’ll post as news comes up, as ideas strike me, as I have time…but I’m not going to worry about having something up every single day. No more staying up until 1AM because I have to have something ready.
Second, I’ll be making more use of Twitter and Facebook for linkblogging. It’s more immediate for you, and takes a lot less time for me.
Third, I’m dropping the weekly Twitter round-up from the blog. As much as I like the idea, it’s not terribly useful if it’s left unedited, and the editing takes a surprising amount of time. I may bring it back if I can come up with a good way to filter it automatically.*
Finally, I’m going to have some help. Aldoth contacted me last week, volunteering to help write for the site. In addition to having two people to cover news, he also has some great ideas for articles. I’ll let him introduce himself in his first post.
All of these together should help keep Speed Force going as The Flash finally relaunches!
*Twitter Tools only posts on a schedule, and posts directly, not to a draft. So I can’t clean things up on my own time before it goes live. On the plus side, it does have a plugin system, so I can write something that will, for example, only include tweets that contain links, or only posts with a particular hashtag. And I should be able to make it clean up the link formatting a little as well. Hmm….
Thanks for the update, Kelson, & good luck.
Kelson, DCU The Source has The Flash #1 ongoing series cover preview, and the… Brightest Day Series (post Blackest Night) information.
Do what you need to do, pal. I went back and forth on closing my own blog, but now that I’ve done it, I have absolutely no regrets. The amount of time I have for other things is wonderful, making me wonder why I felt indebted to it for so long. Sure, it was lots of fun (most of the time), but there comes a time when you realize it’s time for a change. Glad to hear you’ll still be around, but if it still doesn’t do the trick, there’s no dishonor in bidding the blog thing adieu.
.-= Mark Engblom’s latest blog post: Epilogue =-.