Will Moss is a self-proclaimed “modestly successful blogger” in China. He blogs at [Imagethief.com] (http://news.imagethief.com/blogs/china/) and you can also connect with him on [Twitter] (http://twitter.com) [@imagethief] (http://twitter.com/imagethief). He took a moment from his busy schedule to clue us in on the [Chinalyst] (http://www.chinalyst.net/) [Best China Blog Awards] (http://www.chinalyst.net/node/52307), life as a blogger and his expectations for the new year.

About… the Best China Blog Awards

How do you like your chances to win a Chinalyst, Best China Blog Award?
I think my chances are slim to none. Not because my blog isn’t any good, although that’s probably a matter of opinion, but because I don’t particularly tend to promote it and some people are very active about promoting their blogs so historically I don’t tend to win but it’s nice to be recognized, nominated and voted for nevertheless.

Which blogs do you think will win? The ones that just promote themselves? Any in particular?
It’s always hard to predict. The awards are funny because if you look at Chinalyst there’s a lot of blogs that are on there, that aren’t being written anymore, there are blogs that have been idle for the last year or more, some of which are still getting votes so you have to filter for the active blogs, which are still gathering a community, but there are several that are listed on the site that are very good, very active blogs.

… Imagethief vital stats

How many people visit your site per day?
It varies. Recently I’ve been very busy and I haven’t been writing much. Traffic is down a little bit. Sometimes I’ll be very active and traffic increases. I’ll get about 12 to 15,000 visits a month, and about 20,000 page-views. My assumption has always been that there are a few hundred fairly hardcore readers and then a larger group of more occasional readers. For me an average post gets about 1,200 reads by RSS subscriptions and anywhere from a few hundred to 1000 page views. The most viewed post I ever wrote got on the order of 80-90,000 page views, which was a post I wrote about the Edison Chen photograph scandal earlier this year, but I think most of those page views were from people who were googling to find the actual pictures so I don’t pay too much attention to that.

Does most of your traffic come from China or abroad?
It’s a mix. Originally most of my readers were foreigners in China. Well, originally my readers were my Mom, but then we broadened the community a little bit. Currently I think it’s more of a mix of people. It’s still a lot of foreigners living in China, a handful of Chinese people (but I write in English so they have to be bilingual) and a growing number of people overseas who are interested in China. I find that’s become a more important share of the readership in the last couple of years and particularly as China has become more visible on the global stage and we went through things like the Olympics and people overseas started getting more interested. But I think the core of my readership has always been other foreigners living in China and people who have some common experience with me.

… Favorite blogs and the life of a blogger

What are some of your favorite blogs to read, besides your own, of course?
Haha. Actually reading my own blog, particularly the older posts, can be the source of a little bit of embarrassment. One of the wonderful things about the China blogging community is how much it has grown over the last few years. Some of the blogs that I read regularly are David Wolf’s [Silcon Hutong] (http://siliconhutong.typepad.com/silicon_hutong/). David is an ex-colleague of mine and a very astute analyst of business in China. I read [Danwei] (http://danwei.org/), which is the authoritative blog on Chinese media. I read Dan Harris’ [China Law Blog] (http://www.chinalawblog.com/). I read Adam Schokora’s [56minus1] (http://56minus1.com/), which is great for Chinese Internet culture. I very much enjoy the blog [Beijing Sounds] (http://www.bjshengr.com/bjs/), which is written by a very witty writer who is interested in language and the local Beijing dialect. James Fallows, The Atlantic correspondent, who is based in Beijing, writes a very engaging [blog] (http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/). I also very much enjoy [chinaSMACK] (http://www.chinasmack.com/) and [Fool's Mountain] (http://blog.foolsmountain.com/) and there are others of course. I think it would be hard to list them all. I have to go back to my RSS reader every weekend to and try to catch up, so I hope I’m not scandalizing anybody by leaving them out. There’s a lot of very good blogs out there now.

You put a lot of time into blogging. How is it juggling family, work and blogging? Is it hard for you?
Yeah! It’s a real challenge to juggle the time. Work and family really have to come first and that means blogging gets wedged into the corners a little bit. This year has been a busy one, both because of everything that’s happened here in China and what that has meant for my work and also because I had my first son. He takes up a lot of my time and so the blogging has suffered a little bit, but I still try to reserve time for it. I still enjoy it and even if I don’t post as often as I did, I try to make sure I get at least a couple of things up every week to keep the discussion going.

… Trends for the new year and personal new year resolutions

What are some trends you see developing in 2009 in terms of web 2.0 in China or blogging in general?
I think it was Yogi Berra who said, “it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” I think it will be very interesting to see what a somewhat tighter economic environment does to the explosion of new web 2.0 services in China. 2007 and 2008 were banner years for new services. I think the arrival of new services and new companies may slow down a little bit, but web 2.0 and the Internet itself are going to continue to become more important here. As more and more people join the internet, the role that it plays in Chinese society as a conduit of information and discussion will become more and more important and the relationship between the Internet and mass media in China will become more complex. So I can’t tell you what services I believe are going to be popular or what services I think are going to emerge because we’ll look back in a year and I’ll almost certainly have been wrong but I can tell you that I think that it’s going to continue to be an increasingly important part of Chinese discussion and a part of how public issues are shaped in China. How that manifests itself, I think we’ll only find out as we discover what surprises 2009 has in store.

Love that Yogi Berra quote. What are some of your personal new years resolutions for 2009?
To improve my Chinese but that was also my resolution for 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005 so we’ll see how that goes… that’s the main one. Spend a little bit more time on Imagethief without sacrificing either my job or my son. That would be a little difficult as well but we’ll see how that goes…

Nobody wants to sacrifice their son.
“Nobody wants to sacrifice their son.” That actually sounds like a blood ritual or something…

Haha.
What other resolutions do I have? I haven’t really thought about them, because for me resolutions are always made after the guilt of the Christmas eating bonanza and before the penance of the post-new years holiday.

Perhaps during the January first hangover?
Yeah, that’s usually when you are in the mood to start making those ascetic resolutions like, “I’m going to eat less and exercise more,” but I already did that this year so I’m feeling good about that one. Yeah, I think the resolution for me is to keep trying to improve my Chinese skills. My Chinese is adequate but it’s not great and for me, one of the great challenges to understanding what’s going on here is having fairly marginal Chinese skills. I think for anyone who wants to better understand what’s going on here and wants to understand how society is evolving – especially in the context the internet – developing your Chinese skills is very important. So I don’t make that resolution lightly, and I think that’s something I’ll have to rededicate myself to this year.

Awesome. Thank you very much, Will.
My Pleasure.