Chessdom: What are the motives behind one's decision to start a chess blog?
DG: One things for sure, it’s not for the money or the girls. And nobody cuts me any slack over the board because they’re playing the chess blogger. I haven’t been to one of the big open tournaments like Foxwoods in years, so I don’t know whether I’d be swarmed by chess blog groupies, but I doubt it.
I suspect there are a number of different motivations. Some people just want to share their games with others. Some want to collect their thoughts and ideas somewhere and don’t really care if anyone actually reads them. Others are looking to benefit from being part of the community (this is particularly true for the chess improvement crowd). Some have a niche interest they want to bring greater exposure to. Others probably just enjoy writing about chess.
There are other motivations as well. Certain club blogs seek to promote their clubs, while others simply share event announcements and tournament results. Susan Polgar uses her blogs to promote her chess-related activities and run her USCF Executive Board campaign. IM Ben Feingold has used his blog to solicit donations to fund his chess travels. There are purely commercial blogs seeking to drive traffic to sites which sell chess-related products (sometimes openly, other times surreptitiously).
As for BCC Weblog, I had several sources of motivation when I started. I wanted to:
DG: One things for sure, it’s not for the money or the girls. And nobody cuts me any slack over the board because they’re playing the chess blogger. I haven’t been to one of the big open tournaments like Foxwoods in years, so I don’t know whether I’d be swarmed by chess blog groupies, but I doubt it.
I suspect there are a number of different motivations. Some people just want to share their games with others. Some want to collect their thoughts and ideas somewhere and don’t really care if anyone actually reads them. Others are looking to benefit from being part of the community (this is particularly true for the chess improvement crowd). Some have a niche interest they want to bring greater exposure to. Others probably just enjoy writing about chess.
There are other motivations as well. Certain club blogs seek to promote their clubs, while others simply share event announcements and tournament results. Susan Polgar uses her blogs to promote her chess-related activities and run her USCF Executive Board campaign. IM Ben Feingold has used his blog to solicit donations to fund his chess travels. There are purely commercial blogs seeking to drive traffic to sites which sell chess-related products (sometimes openly, other times surreptitiously).
As for BCC Weblog, I had several sources of motivation when I started. I wanted to:
- Learn more about blogging, blog-related technology, and the development of on-line communities
- Have a creative outlet to work on my writing and composition skills
- Bring additional exposure to the club and potentially even some economic benefit in the form of new members, new tournament participants, donations, etc.
- Create an interactive space for members of the club to share any/all chess-related information (this has turned out to be the most difficult one to achieve)
You can read the entire interview here.
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