December 20th, 2008
The Merits and Demerits of LinkBlogging
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Many of you might have noticed that I’m linkblogging again.
In the last few months, I have been doing most of my linkblogging on Twitter. However, often, I have found myself wanting to quote an excerpt or add a comment that just won’t fit in a 140 character tweet (or two). Also, I was seeing how useful linkblogging could be at textually.org, Putting People First and SocialMedia.biz.
So, last week, I hesitantly decided to start linkblogging again, by highlighting interesting news related to social media, social innovation and internet culture in 200 words or less. These posts typically have a link to the source on the top, followed by a one or two paragraph excerpt and a one or two line comment.
You’ll find that I have a strong bias towards news that is weird, or related to mobile, Twitter, or the BRIC countries. You’ll rarely find any news related to Google/ Yahoo!/ Microsoft/ Facebook; you should head to Techmeme for that.
The week of linkblogging has been great fun. The LinkBlog category already accounts for a fourth of my traffic and, in fact, represents an increase in my overall traffic. Similarly, the item use on my RSS feed is up by at least 25% and almost half the readers are clicking through to the original source.
In addition, at least some readers find it useful, which is reassuring given my own doubts about the usefulness of linkblogging (see Saurabh Garg’s post on the demerits of linkblogging) –
Fan Note: Your intelligent combined feed keeps this Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter, now strategic communication consultant to VC-funded firms (several with Indian management) makes me feel a bit briefed on a global view. Now I blog and give speeches and am going to tell others about you. Thank you! (Kare Andersen)
I nominate @Gauravonomics for a @shortyawards in #socialmedia because he’s always updating us on social media stuff. He doesn’t sleep. (Nidhi Makhija)
I am very much aware that linkblogging is a tricky thing and the recent controversy about The Huffington Post’s Chicago Edition (see Wired, Gawker and The Inquisitr) is a reminder that the line between curation and content theft is thin. In fact, after reading about the controversy, I went back to my LinkBlog category and edited a few posts to ensure that I stay on the right side of that thin line.
Finally, the best think about linkblogging is that it helps me in stay in a state of flow, so its easier to write longer posts (like the social media predictions for India for 2009 or the overview of Indian businesses using Twitter).
Do let me know if you find my LinkBlog category useful.
