In my free time, I have been speaking to a number of bloggers, but not the new clicky bloggers on the scene, the actual bloggers who’ve stood the test of time. And yes, I’ve avoided all these journalists who claim to be bloggers. Journalists are not bloggers, journalists are journalists who use blogs as a medium to fuel their articles, but all in all, they are not bloggers, dammit people, realize this! Just because you have some journalist degree (which is piss to get), doesn’t mean that you’re now a top blogger.. lmao, come on!
In the Amatomu Google Group, Vincent recently sent out a list of things, which he felt constituted to spam on Amatomu:
- Posting for the sake of displaying affiliate marketing ads
- Duplicating content frequently
- Creating blogs, deleting them when they go of the latest blog list
and then adding them again - Creating tons of blogs and cross linking between them excessively
to climb the inbound links chart - Creating several blogs, dumping keywords on them then deleting them
once they have Google ranking and redirecting to another UR
Let’s take a look at each of these points quickly.
- I agree with Vincent on this one. It’s getting lame when each time I open a website I see 50 billion Adsense all over the place before I can read what I came to read.
- What does this mean? Same articles on a specific blog or the same articles appearing on different blogs? The web is a big place, each time someone posts an article to Amatomu, are they meant to quickly read the last 1000 posts to see if it’s a duplicate entry. Perhaps Amatomu should have something like Digg, which sorts out duplicate posts.
- This can easily be prevented by the framework, which Amatomu runs on.
- C’est la vie
- C’est la vie
In my opinion, black listing users from Amatomu is not required. Everyone should be allowed freedom of expression and speech, especially in terms of the duplicate article posting note. I agree that Adsense controlled blogs are not what we want, but as far as duplicate articles go or creating of several blogs goes, that’s life. I get the feeling that the people who complain are those who are worried that they might lose ranking. Hottest Gossip is a blog on Amatomu which has raced high, now would that be a ‘blacklistable’ blog, because the articles on there are definitely NOT fresh? The blogs with good information will be seen and they will grow. The blogs with rubbish will perish. That’s how these things go. Ok, I’m not saying there cannot be some form of moderation, that’s not my point, it’s just that I feel these blog aggregators should remain as is. Facebook.co.za was removed from the rankings when it no longer show cased blog posts, this was the correct move. P*es.co.za shot up into the top of the charts, but slowly sank with time. Aggregators sort themselves out, let’s rather watch the movements of nonsense and intelligent blogs than just fan them out? Isn’t that half the fun?
I find that Amatomu is becoming a place for a select few, who are actually all very new to blogging and they all support each other to gain rank, how is this supporting of each other any different from spamming? Perhaps spamming is not the correct word to associate with this, but it’s certainly a form of false advertising to gain rank. Not to mention the number of collective websites which are racing up the charts, which shouldn’t even be there. If any blogger were to find 5 other bloggers, create a blog and each post 2-3 articles a day, the blog would rocket to the top thirty without a doubt – more articles mean more traffic, simple. An example of this would be Thought Leader. Thought Leader is a fantastic website with great resources, don’t get me wrong, but honestly, is it a blog, should it be ranked on Amatomu?
I read Muti constantly, and articles published by specific users automatically seem to appear on the Hot list. I’ve read all these articles, and as an educated person, I can honestly say that there’s no way these articles have hit the Hot list because of the content, it’s purely because of WHO wrote the article and if that WHO falls into the clicky group, then they must have written something good – bullshit!
I’m getting tired of seeing the same ‘bloggers’ pushing and pushing to change the blogging scene locally. Everything was running really well, why the need to keep changing things? Web 2.0 does not give people the license to make changes and just say ‘well it’s web 2.0′!
Vincent.. this has nothing to do with you bud, it’s just the email you wrote, which prompted my thoughts.
Am I completely lost or do my words have some meaning at least?
Side Note: Who wants to create a proper blog aggregator, which only features proper, old school blogs, which are how blogs should be?
Sheesh hey, when I started my silly little pink blog on Blogger a few years ago, blogging was meant to be about having fun and sharing your opinions with whoever happened to read them. People added links to blogs they read, and usually those blogs would link back to you too as a token of thanks. There weren’t a whole lot of girl bloggers in our little world, but there sure as hell wasn’t any marginalizing and blacklisting.
Some people started totally pointless blogs that were just plain wrong, but it was fine – the whole point wasn’t about getting ratings and being all journo and trying to shift things into little networks and whatnot.
Now that I have grown up a bit and have taken both my old Rox in the City blog as well as a newer Roxilla one onto their own domains, a lot has changed in the blogisphere, but my outlook on the point of blogging hasn’t at all. I really don’t give a toss about rankings and ratings, all I want is a little place to get on my pink soapbox and shout it a bit.
I can see how some sites would want to push up their ratings though, and like you said, some of these bloggers are using their blogs to punt their other business.
So, I say bugger blog manipulation. Bring back old skool blogging communities who helped get the blogisphere where it is today. At the end of the day, it’s meant to be about fun and expression, not bloody control and blacklisting.
Just my 2c anyway. :-P
I agree rox, a great deal has changed in the blogipshere over the past couple of years and it just upsets me that most of the personal blogs are being pushed down the ranks only to be replaced by these fancy corporate blogs, which are fueled by money, business and business related connections.
As you said, ‘fun and expression’, that’s what it should be. It’s all about personal views and if your blog is not pushed with money or business relations, it shouldn’t suffer a low ranking or be booted as spam if it doesn’t suite the ‘in crowds’ determinants.
I really think some form of movement needs to be made!
Chris, It seems to me that if you can’t beat them you must join them. In terms of cliques, I notice the whole MUTI clique listed in your web Gurus list. I have no argument with your thought processes, I just wonder why you would use the but not the new clicky bloggers on the scene, the actual bloggers who’ve stood the test of time.
Some of the so called new bloggers were blogging in the back ground, some of them don’t fit in with the norms of the cliques. The so called A list bloggers.
Just because someone is a journo does not disqualify them from blogging. The grouping of blogs seems to be an issue. If each of the Thought leader Bloggers had to sink or swim on their own, I am not sure Thought leader would be in the top blogs.
My own blogs have come close to the top 50 but as yet due to various reasons, I have not yet done that. I will sometime soon as I have now centralised my blogging efforts and am adding all my older blogs into the mix. The difference is as I bring the blog into the fold I am deleting it from Amamtomu.
Everything will now be on the blog that is currently somewhere near the 90th position on Amamtomu. I am also creating another site that will have more than one contributor, but thats mainly a local news blog, not a general free for all, currently a little higher than my blog on the rankings but not much,
I think the rules instituted by the team at Amatomu may actually level the playing field a little. PS neither of my two blogs have the big money behind them, but hopefully they do ahead of them.
Hi Guy,
I see your point about the list of web gurus and I see how that could be contradicting. But, something I probably should have stated was that my views in this point have nothing to do with intelligence or ability online. The web gurus stated on my website are web gurus. The title was not blog guru’s, for example.
Ye, I know a number of new bloggers who have actually been blogging in the background for a long time. This is why I didn’t name people or anything as I didn’t want to pinpoint someone or make a mistake. It’s an open minded, purely my and a few others views post.
Journalists can blog, I don’t say they can’t, I merely say that just because they are journalists doesn’t mean that they are A-list bloggers, that’s all.
I look forward to seeing your local news blog, I love Muti, so I can see myself loving a local news blog, run by a blogger :) Best of luck Guy!
Ye, I’ve nothing against the people nor do I want to start some Internet flame or fire, I just wanted to express my views and see what the other bloggers have to say. I am hoping that this thread might turn into a lovely discussion area. My aim is not to drive traffic via this point, nor make money, I’m just interested in everyones views.
Thanks for you views Guy, please drop me a line once your new sites are live, I would be more than happy to review them here!
Except that me and my sites have been banned from MUTI because one of my clients did not know the unwritten rules and I had the temerity to back him up.
Ah no man :(
Well, the local news site you are working on will be a fresh start then :)
Chris, also not a personal attack, lot’s of smiley faces etc.
It seems you misunderstood my email and the context in which it was written. Firstly, that email was a response in a thread where I asked people whether they think a blacklist is a good idea or not. Someone asked me what I consider spammers and those were my list of answers. This was meant to be a discussion between Amatomu users, not a final list.
Now on the list issue, the duplicate entry issue works like this. Some chumps register their blogs ten or 15 times and their feeds get duplicated in our database that many times. I have no idea where you’re getting the idea that this has to do with the age of the post etc, that’s not how Amatomu works. Obviously this is something the system can deal with but the point is those accounts are going to be banned.
Again on the creating blogs thing – the precise reason Amatomu isn’t full of spam and crap is because I actually look at it every day. The system can prevent people from re-registering blogs but the point is that there are sometimes legitimate reasons for doing this and sometimes not. Those doing it to keep their name in the latest blogs list are going to get banned.
I don’t get how you can say “C’est la vie” to people polluting a resource that currently originates at least 9% of the local blog traffic we track daily. Ask any aggregator and they will tell you that once a system gets polluted people stop using it, and when that happens then a resource for the community will be lost.
So back to the question of blacklisting. I don’t really like the idea but its an option worth exploring with the user base. It’s easy enough to speak idealistically about a blog “community” but the reality is that there are a LOT of spoilers who will destroy our public resources if we let them and we need to take a stand, and a strong one.
As a side note on your comments about journalists using blogs, since when does blogging exclude people who write professionally? Your comments about journalism degrees being easy to get are fair enough, just like any other degree these days though. Shouldn’t your argument be about the quality of content rather than the educational and vocational background of the people who are blogging?
Hi Vincent,
Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply, it’s been a really unpleasant day my side and I didn’t want to just throw a random response together.
Awesome reply, I must say that it’s great to hear all of these things explained so clearly and I total agree with everything you’ve said about the duplicate entries and re-registering of blogs. I like to be very up to date with the trends and movements of these blog aggregators and you’ve cleared things up fantastically.
Blogging does not exclude journalists, and I’m sorry if my words came across that way, it was not my intension. I just get annoyed at some of the talk which has been going around favouring journalists who use blogs as a medium over your normal daily blogger. Content is key, we all know this, but not everyone is able to write perfectly and phrase things precisely – I hate to see bloggers losing credibility because they are not star writers, that’s all I was really getting at.
Thanks for your comments Vincent, you’ve cleared things up fantastically.