The RSS Blog

News and commentary from the RSS and OPML community.

A happening today made me realize I had a great followup for the unblogosphere conversation. In my original post, I talked about how many b-list and c-list bloggers link in every post to a-listers, just hoping to get that one link back, which often never happens. Today's happening proves that not linking to an a-lister is just as good a strategy. I have always refused to link to Mike Arrington because I think he's a fraud. When his blog broke the FeedBurner-Google confirmation, I sought out another blog to link to, because I refuse to link to him. In that attempt, I accidentally linked to someone that plagiarized the original author. After watching many of my friends link to this a-lister over-and-over for years with no return link, I was able to get one, by simply not linking to the same a-lister. I think this is validation, that expanding your linking behavior to b-listers and c-listers works, even if by accident.

http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=398

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There's definitely something to be said about linking to the less linked patches of the internet. That's how you build relationships. They are the ones who remember you.

Sorry about my comment on the crunchnotes post. I speed read it the first time I thought your blog was the splogger Mike was talking about (not that you were the ones who linked to them).

Egg on the face.
Quite irresponsible and envious behavior refusing to link techcrunch. He always links when there is something to link. Perhaps not linking to you is because there was nothing to link to you all this time. Shame on you for this one. By the way, good work linking a splogger. You were so anxious to report the "breaking" news to the world that you did not even notice they were stealing content.

My final 2 cents: I like your blog. I would link to you if I had a blog. Very often. Good content.

No sorry was necessary. I'm not easily offended.

Randy

I wouldn't worry about whether or not some A-lister links to you. Just write great content and provide value. From what I can see, you do that. Sure, it'd be nice to get some traffic share occasionally, but how much better to build your own audience? I'd say you're doing fine.

What I hate is when some bloggers get the Geek SuperEgo Syndrome... that "I love me, you can love me too" crap. Many viewers/subscribers do not necessarily equate to profundity. And there ain't nothin' more boring than someone else's ego masturbation. :)
It's your prerogative re: not linking to A-listers, but linking to a splog (a blatant rip-off of the same content) instead is seriously not cool.

If you take value in the news (you obviously did, since you wrote about it) then the person who broke it deserves the link. You could at least have linked to someone discussing TechCrunch's news...

-Conrad
Your call, but you shouldn't take the linking thing so personally, you've got no idea how much noise is created around a large blog, it's never personal when you're not linked to, there's literally not enough time in the day for it to get to that level. I know from my experience at TC that I'm lucky if I even get to read a full range of feeds and then deal with emails during a day, and I'm not getting all of them!
Duncan.
I think linking to A-Listers 3 or 4 years ago, in the hope of getting a traffic-generating pingback, may have worked rather well, back when the blogosphere was much smaller.

Hell, nowadays it's hard enough reading all the good blogs out there, let alone linking to them....
Dude, who cares? Shouldn't we be concerned about creating content instead of fawning over traffic scraps that fall off the big guys' tables?

- Udo
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