Three's a Crowd, Except for Today

As many of you know, I don't have one blog, I have three. Three blogs with identical content.

The question any inquisitive blog hopper would ask is "Why? What kind of doofus maintains three identical blogs?"

That's a good question and today your curiosity shall be satisfied.

Xanga:

I started out with Xanga. My then teenage daughter had a Xanga site and I found the whole idea of writing a regular journal online a bit...weird. Nonetheless, I often found myself in the upstairs office driving Funsocksgirl crazy by leaning over her shoulder and reading her journal entries and the comments and her friends' blogs. I was forever pestering her with, "What's that mean? Who's that? How'd you do that? Why don't you tell them about______? Oooooo. You should tell him __________!"

I think she finally got fed up with being my proxy because she opened a Xanga account for me. My first entries were a bit dubious. Who the heck cared what I had to say? But slowly I warmed to my task. The entries became more frequent and more creative. My writing even improved once some kind soul explained to me how to edit my entries.

Little by little I began to learn how to change my profile picture, change the background and text. I mastered the posting of links. I figured out how to leave smilies in my comments on other Xangas. Recently I even prevailed by changing some of the html coding so "Add a Comment" was morphed into something that better fit my personality.

I've been on Xanga a looooong time now. It feels like an old friend!
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Live Journal:

The original reasons I wanted a Live Journal were to

A) be able to comment on Funsocksgirl's LJ site (She's known as Suuuperbek there).

FSG essentially had left Xanga and was posting exclusively on LJ. I could comment there as an "anonymous" person. But I love attention too much to remain anonymous for long!

B) I wanted a separate blog to post my creative writing on.

Unfortunately, I had an ancient iMac OS 9 and a very slow dial-up internet connection. It was overwhelming to even TRY to set up my own blog. So FSG came to rescue again and set it up for me. I was so technologically inept, even after getting a cable modem and a new speedy iMac, that she was even kind enough to facilitate any changes I wanted to that site. Sadly, she lives in NY and I live in Maine. That makes it difficult for me to communicate exactly what I want. So I tinkered. I can manage some changes on the LJ all by myself now. Goody for me, and more free time for Funsocksgirl!
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Blogger:

I set this one up ALL BY MYSELF! (I know you are shocked. Eat some chocolate and you'll be fine.)

There are several explanations for this venture.

A) Many of the blogs I visit are Blogger sites and I was tired of commenting anonymously.

B) No one can comment on Xanga unless they have a Xanga site. That was keeping several people from bothering to comment on my posts. Since I want to direct folks from the writer's forum and Squidoo to my entries, Blogger was a better choice.

C) I actually understand, for the most part, how Blogger works. This means I can easily post pictures, add items to the sidebar, etc. It is very user friendly!

D) I think it has a more clean, professional look than Xanga.

E) Blogger doesn't accidently lose posts; It saves unfinished posts as drafts. This is happy news for someone who has lost several Loooong posts on Xanga because I accidently touched the wrong button on the keyboard before I was done. Nonetheless, I always (ALWAYS) write my posts on my WP now, then copy and paste it into the blogs.
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And so, there you have it. That's why I currently have three blogs. But why do I KEEP three blogs?

Well, first of all, Im starting to get into the whole search-engine-tags-and-bots mentality. My posts are identical, but I alter the titles so that those nosy internet bots will give my writing more exposure. It isn't making much of a difference yet, but I'm confident it will in the future.

I'm mainly keeping LJ because I already have it. I'm no longer sure that I want to post all my stories and poems for others to potentially steal, so I've stopped using it for that. I find it the most confusing and difficult to work with, and no one comments there anymore, but there are bots and there are lurkers…besides, LJ has fun little mood icons!

I keep both Xanga and Blogger because I use them as crutches for my limping abilities to master technology. Links are easy to post on Xanga, but I can't figure out how to post them on Blogger. SOOoooooo, if I want to post a link, I do it on Xanga first, then copy the html code onto the other two sites.

Conversely, pictures are extremely easy to post on Blogger. I have tried and tried to post them on Xanga, but they disappear every time no matter how carefully I follow the instructions! Therefore, if I have pics that I want to show to the world, I post them on Blogger first and then copy the codes onto the other sites.

It's a complicated process, but it works for me!