My last post was slashdotted. Not servers-melting slashdotted, but unusual-volume-of-comments slashdotted. I posted it late on a Saturday night, so I guess they had no other news fit to print.

It was interesting, and a little bit exciting, to be linked from Slashdot. I have no great insights, but a few observations.

1. I thought something was odd when I started getting comments from outside the SVG community, which is the only place I can imagine I have any sort of fame or notoriety. So I followed a Twitter reference on SVG back to its source. I’m sure this is the most I’ve been referenced in Twitter, too… though most weren’t retweets of my own pointer to my blog. Interesting to see how Twitter and Slashdot interact, and how aggregators like Slashdot are the primary focus of links from Twitter, moreso than the original source. Some aggregators retweeted the story several times at intervals, I reckon to get more attention from those who blinked the first few times (srsly, smashingmag? Retweeting it 11 times? Okay).
2. I was surprised that “indexing SVG” was the topic that got the attention of the Slashdot community. I didn’t expect anyone to be particularly interested in my little study, outside the rarefied Web Standards community, which is who it was written for. My guess is that it may have seemed a bit controversial, because someone from the W3C looked with a critical eye at Google (a Giant Corporation, and one of our members). Everyone loves scandal! I’ve learned my lesson… now all my posts will attack some company. (If you are interested in some press-grabbing attention, my fee for insulting your company on this blog is very reasonable.)
3. In true Slashdot fashion, it’s pretty obvious that many of those who bothered to comment clearly didn’t read my blog post, or didn’t get my central point; it’s not surprising, since that wasn’t really the audience I expected (and I do ramble a bit). Some folks tried to turn it into an SVG vs. Flash debate, which entirely missed the point. That said, there were some thoughtful comments that I replied to on Slashdot and on my blog.
4. I spent much more time following up on my post than I expected. I’m glad it wasn’t a weekday, where it may have gotten even more attention. Still, I hope it did give some people food for thought.
5. Either I’m too prolix (guilty!), or Twitter has reduced the average attention span to… ooh, shiny! Adobe’s JD took a friendly dig at me in his comment, and maybe on Twitter, too. My post was a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. I prefer to thoroughly explore an idea and provide context and evidence when I bother writing at all. I suppose that is old fashioned. I’ll work on it.

Sorry, I have to go now… my fifteen minutes are up.