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"Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak."
Natalie Goldberg

Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Get rid of the gubbins

That's one of the to do items for today on the whiteboard above my desk, one that I've ticked off, and it gave me great delight to do so.

Gubbins, such an evocative term for them - pointless fiddly little widgets and what-not. I had a look at my blogs today, at the voting buttons, the Technorati "authority" ranks etc etc and I just thought "what the hell is the point?"

I mean honestly - what value do they add? None. Do regular readers pay attention to them? No. Do casual readers? No. Do they bring any new readers? No.

So what purpose do they serve? None whatsoever. They are the internet equivalent of slapping your dicks on the table and measuring them. I didn't do that as a teenager, I'm sure as hell not doing it at the age of 30 on the world wide web.

Who honestly gives a flying fuck about your "authority" - all that tells me is that you're a link whore. There are blogs out there with huge numbers who exist for no other purpose than to collect links to other blogs to drive up traffic. For ad revenue, or for spurious claims that they provide you with some kind of value (and honestly, looking at some of these big number blogs, they are just pyramid schemes - "I'll show you hot to make a shitty looking blog that gives you a headache, but makes you money - just make another fucking link whore site like mine!")

Nah, sorry, I'm not playing that game and I'm bowing out. It may not be very social media of me, but screw it, the Emperor has no clothes. Anyone who cares what I have to say will not give a damn about stupid popularity contests, and the type of people who do? Well, they probably weren't interested in what I had to say, only in getting another link...

So they're gone - the only things I've kept are the ones that I think have some genuine value, ones that serve a purpose, or that foster genuine networking and community, not shallow, hollow linkage.

Apologies for the swearing folks, but today I don't feel so eloquent...
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posted by Paul at 18:47
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