A monthly feature wherein I opinionate on other folks’ blogs.
Blogbats to… (things that are annoying me this month)
1. Blogs that tell everyone who is visiting and from where
Maybe if I lived in New York or London or anywhere but Immediately Identifiable Place No One Else in the Blogosphere lives, I wouldn’t mind. But sometimes I want to visit and lurk, and I feel I’ve been outed when I look at the sidebar and there I am.
Irrational, I know, but there it is.
2. Blogs that provide partial posts in feeds.
There are two arguments for this heinous practice:
1. If your blog is monetized (you want to make money off it), partial feeds get you more traffic.
As to this argument, I (and many other smarter people) say bupkis:
Survey after survey has shown that users overwhelmingly prefer full feeds. Some have even said that they refuse to subscribe to a short feed and, according to FeedBurner, who manages over 800,000 feeds, there is virtually no difference in the click-through rate for partial vs. full feeds.
2. Partial feeds make it more difficult for sploggers to steal your content.
Again, I (and the experts) say bupkis.
[T]he flaw in this logic is that it ignores how scrapers find the content and how they use it. Spammers do not locate articles and feeds to pull content from based upon length, but through an automated process that detects keywords and phrases. They also obtain RSS feeds through large RSS lists, much like email lists, that are passed around and sold among the black hat crowd.
Either way, little evaluation is given to the length of the feed when choosing where to scrape from.
Finally, truncating the feed may not limit the benefit many spammers get from the content. For one, since spammers are typically targeting keywords, truncating the feed might increase the keyword density and actually help them. Second, many spammers are voluntarily truncating the feeds they scrape to avoid duplicate content penalties and reduce their copyright liability.
So, hear my plea: give me all of your wonderful words in my reader!!!
Bouquets to… (things I love this month)
1. The Book Smugglers’: New Look. Awesome, easy to navigate, and they even got hot likenesses in their banner.
2. Romancing the Blog: How awesome is this blog? It’s one of the few author blogs I visit. Lots of different voices (readers, too), always saying something just interesting enough to keep my attention, and just long enough that I can actually finish the post in one sitting.
3. Ramblings on Romance For the tone — Kristie and Katiebabs keep it not just civil, but positively benevolent. I was reading Kristie’s “Best of 2008″ post and this sentence caught my eye,
There are a couple of books not on the above list that I think would be on it if I had had time to read them.
That sentence just typifies what I love about this blog. In another, more recent post, “Enough Already”, Kristie rants about a few things that have been bothering her. But even in the midst of this “rant”, she has the diplomacy to refer to JR Ward fans as “passionate”. Even when they don’t like books, the gals at RoR have read them carefully, and will intersperse the negative comments with “sigh” or “sadly” rather than (as would be more my style) evil cackles and the search for ever more perjorative adjectives.
OMG WE got another bouquet?? I heart you Jessica, thank you! Thank you!
And of course, you are 100% – we look EXACTLY like those chicks in the header. EXACTLY, down to skinny butt and everything. *grin*
Ana wrote:
Yes, but it must be kept in perspective. It represents one stodgy, uncool, and pathetically unconnected and therefore uninfluential viewpoint. Come to think of it, it might be better for your image if I didn’t love your blog so much.
Good. My faith in the internets is intact!
er, I limit my feed because it’s syndicated on livejournal, and if you don’t, the entire post is dumped onto people’s friends lists, which pisses them off.
I don’t give a damn about ads – I don’t run any on my blog – or spammers. I just care about annoying people reading my feed where they can’t control the length.
I limit the feeds on Uniquely Pleasurable for the same reason, and because some people might consider a review a spoiler. I want them to have a choice as to whether they want to read the full review for a particular item or not.
“I feel I’ve been outed when I look at the sidebar and there I am.”
The only blogs I’ve seen that on, have been the kind of blogs who are otherwise free and easy with people’s privacy, so I am totally with you on that.
Woohoo! Another bouquet! Thanks Jessica, and we’re stoked you’re loving the new blog design. Those two girls in our header, I swear, it’s like looking in a mirror. Hehe.
And I am with you on the partial post feeds. So. Irritating. I’m all for increasing web traffic, but I would much rather just read full posts in my convenient reader, as opposed to having to click through.
Oh now that I am more collected and gathered my wits: I LOVE Ramblings on Romance as well, KristieJ’s was the blog that inspired me to go ahead and get cracking on the Book Smugglers. They SO deserve a bouquet as well.
I don’t read Romancing the blog as much as I should. *blushes*
Ann Somerville wrote:
Ok, I guess I have another argument to consider. That one seems compelling.
Back to dinner — how many meals have I ruined for my family by trying to blog while cooking? (and how many stains, splashes and other indignities have I subjected my poor Macbook to?)
Thanks for the heads up on romancing the blog! I’ll be reading that for sure. Oh, I have one of those city things at the bottom of my blog. Sorry. But nobody ever sees it, as it’s SO far down, don’t you think? or am I one of the people you mean???
LOL – well I don’t have one of those widgets you’re talking about – mostly ’cause I’ve not much of a clue when it comes to sidebar stuff.
And *laughing harder*, I have no idea what RSS, Partial feeds or any of that is – it’s like I’m a standard driver in an automatic blogging world.
But thank you Ever So Much for enjoying the blog. I must say though that sometimes – not often – but sometimes Krisite cackles evilly and types something less diplomatic – those are the times I win though and keep her quiet and make her sit on her hands for a bit until I have her under control. Once in a while though she gets away on me though
Sometime I should let her go wild though and people will think “who IS that kick ass bitch?”
carolyn jean wrote:
What, you couldn’t feel the bat wings tickling your neck as you were typing that comment?
In seriousness, I never noticed your city thingy. But if you have one, then yes, I mean you. But these posts — UNLIKE my reviews, ahem — are purely subjective. I know a lot of folks really enjoy checking out where other visitors hail from.
Kristie — I know all about Krisite, and her existence makes Kristi(j) all that more impressive.
I’ll accept my bat graciously and can understand your feelings. = )
I find the new fangled tracking widgets rather sexy and a touch of friendly honesty. Since assuming most bloggers generally use/or will use some visitor tracking App; It becomes a matter of preference to disclose visually with your readers or not. Romancelandia’s such a small world, the quaint mix of being somewhat anonymous and somewhat recognizable is hard to escape.
I am guilty of the first point. I saw it on some blog and i just wanted to check if it really gives accurate results. So I put it on my blog and it worked. But i don’t really get its purpose unless i want to see how many times i have checked my own blog
I have been lazy in removing it, you have given me the push required. Off it goes
Oh, guilty as charged on the first one. But since I have no earthly idea where you are I don’t feel too bad about it – you’re not outed to me.
Actually I just think it’s a neat little thing because I’m geography obsessed. It’s like Flat Steven or whatever that is for bloggers.
Mistress wrote:
I agree with you, there.
Violet wrote:
Shouldn’t there be a way to eliminate your own visits? I know on my Sitemeter count on my sidebar, it does not count my own visits when I am logged in. If it did, I would have quadruple the visits!
Kate wrote:
Good point, and very true. Now I can add “egostastic” to “irrational” when I describe my dislike of those things!
I used to look at my world map in Sitemeter all the time (hey honey! someone from Israel visited my blog!”). But I feel like there’s a difference between the site owner having access to who is visiting and everyone else having access to it.
But just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with having them at all. This is just a one person’s subjective opinion. And it’s probably a minority one.
Flat Stanley. I was in bed awake last night when it occurred to me that it was Flat Stanley, not Flat Steven, and I almost came downstairs and turned on the computer but made myself wait until the morning, hoping that no one would notice. Sorry about that.
And I didn’t mean to imply you’re egotisitcal! It was meant to be reassuring.
In any case, I do love seeing where people are visiting from (and I’m adding this parenthetical remark to keep the sentence from ending in a preposition.) It’s not much deeper than that for me.
So, is this like celebrity appearances on Sesame Street, when your blog isn’t really considered a ‘real’ one until it’s made an appearance in the bouquets or blogbats? *g*
And I love it when I find evidence to support my theory (a.k.a. writing procrastination excuse) that surfing is necessary because it’s educational: learned the word ‘splogger’ here today.
Kate wrote:
I am so glad I am not the only person who does this.
Oh, I know. But I am egotistical. I think anyone who has a blog has at least a streak of ego, actually.
Maya M. wrote:
I’m offended by the comparison to Sesame Street. Triple R is so much bigger than some kids’ show. I think American Idol would be more apt.
Seriously, my spouse just looked over my shoulder and said, “What are you, the fascist of the blogosphere?”
Next installment will be 100% blogbats for me, I promise.