The Entrecarder

This category is new to me, not having existed a year ago when I was an active Entrecarder. Today's listing shows 99 blogs in the category, although there are only 35 that show up via the browse function, and only about half of those seem to be active Entrecarder, based on their numbers.

Stud Kickass:Web Comic sits atop the heap, and I clicked through about 10 blogs in this category before my interest waned. I admit I'm not a comic person and it takes quite a bit to get me to smile, much less laugh out loud. Of course, only a small percentage of the blogs in this category are attempting to be humorous comics, and there is no denying the authors have more artistic talent than I do.

I'll probably give some of these blogs a try when I'm back to dropping cards and see if any of them strike my fancy enough for me to become a regular visitor.

It looks like the same place, only I don't recognize many of the faces in the Entrecard community. I signed up with Entrecard in December 07 and felt like I was a latecomer joining a group of pioneers. New features were rolling out on a regular basis, as were new categories of blogs. Making Money Online was one of the most active categories, as were Computers and Internet and Internet Marketing. A quick browse through today's Most Popular shows a predominance of Entrecards with the word "Mom" in them or pictures of animals.

What happened to the Making Money Onliners? Where'd they go? Are they making money elsewhere or did they go get a day job, like I did? It was just over a year ago that 1000 Entrecard Credits sold on ebay for $20. Now, there aren't any results for an ebay search for "Entrecard", so I'm guessing that it's against the rules to sell ECs.

So where does one start with so many blogs to choose from? And what do I want this blog to accomplish? There was a brief moment when The Entrecarder served as part of the town's welcome wagon, being as there were only a few hundred active Entrecarders and only a couple of us that were regularly writing about Entrecard developments. Entrecard is now a bustling city where one is no longer expected or able to know all of its citizens. The neighborhoods (categories) have grown into towns in their own right and some have more citizens than Entrecard did when I first arrived.

The upside is that with the larger population it is easier to target a specific audience and if so motivated focus all of one's daily drops on them. I'll wander around a bit and see where I'm most comfortable and likely chronicle my travels here in this blog.

It's been a long time, been a long time...

As of the moment I'm not a current Entrecard member and until I've banged out 5 quality articles I won't be considered by the new manual review system. I enjoyed my time as an Entrecarder and while gathering info for my taxes I noted that I earned about $1000 from selling Entrecard Credits in the first half of 2008. The rules changed and I found myself engaged in other income activities that caused my Entrecard activity to drop and my interest to wan. So I wasn't too broken up when my 20 or so accounts got booted from the service a few months ago.

I faced a decision about Entrecard recently when Godaddy sent me a renewal notification for my Entrecarder.com domain. True, I wasn't using it actively, but I had put lots of effort into branding that term as mine. I opted to renew it for another 12 months and see if I couldn't have some fun with Entrecard again, assuming they would have me back.

So, as I logged in to start writing this post I noticed a comment from a disgruntled visitor asking me to take down my Entrecard widget so as not to waste his time whilst performing his dropping ritual. I'm not quite sure how he found my site, but am guessing it is on a big list someplace as there was a time when I was amongst the highest ranked Entrecard sites.

Hence the idea of echos. Just how long would my brief stint as he Entrecarder have a presence in our cyberworld? 5 years? 25 years? Could it be that 50 years from now some odd search combination would yield a reference to me, THE Entrecarder?

Odd. I chose to write about a virtual community, never intending to have an impact beyond the moment and yet the echos continue to bounce around month and month, year after year. But unlike the degradation of sound in real world echos, my words might appear as if I had just written them, ignoring the changes in life that accompany the passage of time. Some might find that type of immortality to be pleasing, an achievement only dreamed of by writers at any other era of man's existence. However, that thrill should be tempered by the realization that there might come a time when our own words condemn us, and try as we might, it's not within our power to call them all back.

So, it makes sense to me to keep on writing, in the hopes that I either create an improved record or render an evaluation of my words meaningless due to the sheer volume of the entries.

Hi, I'm Kent Vorkink, The Entrecarder.