So there’s this blog that I loved. Loved as in past tense. Why the change of heart of my opinion? Simple: guest blogging.
I know it’s kind of popular. People who want to get their name out there, get more links back to their own blogs will guest blog on someone else’s blog for a day. But this blog (which, ironically, is about blogging – platforms, niches, etc.) used to have like a guest blogger entry maybe once every few months. Now it’s every single day. Sometimes those days also include an entry from the actual person who runs the website, but more often than not, there’s a guest entry. Each entry is clearly labeled as being from a guest author – which is good, the person’s not claiming the work to be his own, but at the same time… I used to read his blog because of his writing and his witty commentary about blogging trends and whatnot. Not because of everyone else that wrote in guest entries for his blog.
I recently went through and whittled down the list of blogs that I have on my RSS feeds – I went from 119 to under 50. Among the removed RSS feeds were the blog with the annoying surplus of guest blog entries, a personal finance blog of a woman who always claimed about never being able to pay off her debts but funded several vacations in 2009 on credit and a blog about cupcakes (cupcakes!) where the authors stopped posting photos of their own work, and just started linking to Flickr accounts.
Did bloggers just get lazier, or is it just me?
Anyways… School’s been interesting-ish. A lot of construction going on, more thefts have been reported =/ There was a piece in my school’s paper where a girl said she took a nap in one of the libraries for ~20 minutes and when she woke up, her backpack was gone (containing her laptop, purse and a textbook). That thief certainly has guts doing that, especially since there’s security cameras and not a lot of places that don’t have other students around.
I don’t understand guest blogging at all. I get the networking aspect of it… but, that’s about where it ends.
As for posting inspiration from Flickr or whathaveyou, I guess it just depends on the way it’s handled. I don’t find the occasional Flickr Find Friday on what is normally a personal blog, because sometimes other people do make pretty cool stuff and sharing it is fun. I also don’t mind sites that are entirely made up of other people’s work, so long as it’s credited and sort of a showcase/promotion sort of deal. (Epicute, for example, is awesome.) But, I can understand losing interest in someone who was originally doing their own thing, then slowly faded into featuring others’ work.
I haven’t heard of any thefts at my college, but I did watch someone buy pot and roll a joint in plain view in front of the main building today. Granted, the laws about marijuana are fairly lenient here (we do host Hash Bash, after all) but, I don’t think that applies in a school zone.
I know someone who had a guest blogger – Caity of Caity.nu, who I assume you know. 🙂 It was nice having an entry by Josh, and very interesting too.
I don’t understand why people would get so “into” guest blogging though. I know on several occasions in 2008, I wanted to blog every day but I wasn’t able to, and I got grounded (lol) for some time, so I got James to post a few blogs for me. But when someone has their own blog and some dedicated visitors who visit for what they post, having guest bloggers every day will most likely have you lose visitors. It’s just the way I see it. It’s interesting, but too much of anything is not good.
Ah well, if people aren’t being original, I see it as their loss, whether they’re lazy or not. Being lazy isn’t an excuse. It’s a shame but in the end they’re the ones at loss. Fancy those authors just linking to Flickr!
I’m sure we have security cameras at uni, but everyone is so nice and friendly and you can just put so much trust in people to mind your belongings while you hop off to the toilet, or even while you fall asleep on the couch with your bag next to you. I like the environment. :’)
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a guest blogger on occasion, but when it comes to having a guest blog entries every day for months, it gets to be excessive and I just stop wanting to following them on the basis that I might as well just follow *those* blogs instead, since it’s their work that I’m reading.