Image from rtv, linked to source
Before I start this seeming tirade against a sort of blogging I call the “guest blogging magazine format” I want to just reiterate like I usually do that I am not judging anyone. I am simply stating opinions I hold based on facts. I find that those who become offended by what I write are usually not interested in being confused by the facts. To that sort I make no apologies.
Each day or so I go blog hopping. Google Reader is my vehicle. I have become well acquainted with a small array of blogs and their “styles.” It is really cool when I can hear the voice of a blogger and, after a while, I usually can. That is … until recently. This movement (my term) of multiple author “magazine style” blogging is causing me to “unsubscribe” from several bloggers I once enjoyed reading daily. Not only do I see this mindless aggregation on blogs I see it in pop-up success sites like http://paper.li/ There has been a platform similar to this for years called WordPress MU. I am finding myself disagreeing with articles only to find I am arguing in the comments with someone other than the blogger who owns the blog and whose voice I subscribe to. I find these sorts of blogs to be less and less interesting to me. I mean, if I want to read a variety of authors in one place, I will subscribe to a real magazine, not a patched together quilt of people. There is no continuity and the effort put into these posts is minimal. It is all done for a backlink which I think is pathetic. Writing should thrill and these aggregated blogs with primarily guest blog content fail to do so. I don’t know this for a fact but I think most the traffic to these is the writers themselves checking out their name on a new “headline” space as-it-were.
Real life example: The other day I read a friend’s blog and found the post to be mundane and atypical of his voice. At the bottom I saw the guest blogger was also someone I knew but had little respect for. The articles are always about MMOL and affiliate marketing. I like posts about movies and kite-flying and discovering things in your home nucleus. I have never been awe-struck by bloggers who blog about blogging and making money doing so. If I can’t make money writing about life and it’s rich pageantry, I won’t expect to make money. The very next day I saw, on the guest bloggers blog, a tirade about guest bloggers not creating quality posts. It was probably the most hypocritical thing I have seen in blogging.
So here’s my point: The weblog (blog) came about when people learned they could have personal publishing power on their laptop. it was never meant to be a place where people scratch each others backs for link juice. That is what guest blogger filled blogs have become. A bog by definition is a way to publish and read individual voices. I am not saying no one will ever guest blog on my blogs (though no one has for a long time). I am instead saying that I have less interest in these magazine style blogs with an eclectic and disjointed set of voices. I couldn’t simply unsubscribe from these three blogs tonight without giving some sort of explanation. Perhaps I will wait a while to see if this troubling trend fades from these voices I once enjoyed so much. As the old saying goes:
“Speak for yourself.”
Postscript: I have received multiple requests for people to guest blog at my teaching blog and turned them all down because they all want to link back to a company. I charge around $150 for 3 years to place a link back to a company. If a person wants to link to their blog, they can guest blog. I will no longer however accept guest blogger requests to things like “onlinecollege” etc. These are clearly companies seeking to steal adspace under the guise of guest blogging. If you think about it, a lot of guest bloggers are just like that. My final word is that if you plan to write on my blog, it better knock my socks off. Only I am allowed to write stuff that sucks around these parts ;)
Readers of this post also read: