Scobleizer: Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs (I went overboard, read updates)
jaemo
· 2 years ago
LOL. Blogs are a medium. Meaning they are neither rare nor well done. I don't blame sites for not linking to blogs - if I'm Joe Reader, I'm there to absorb good quality content, not the verbal diarreah that pervades almost ever corner of the "blogsphere".
lol....blogsphere.
Brian Lam
· 2 years ago
Hey Robert. If you look at most ever post we write, attributed source. Same with Engadget. So how did you come up with the conclusion that we don't link to blogs? If it was merely on the basis that we didn't immediately publish your comment or link to your video, well, I would ask what your motivation was in terms of posting this incorrect information that hurts our reputations a bit.
Anyhow, not a big deal. I'm glad you gave me a call so we could clear things up. Have a good weekend, man.
I'll be sure to check out the video later, too.
Anatoly Lubarsky
· 2 years ago
I guess this list sucks. Wikipedia does not link either. Digg actually links, you should be able to post yuor story.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Anatoly: if I submit my own links to Digg the community says I'm an asshole. So I don't do it. Just like I don't edit Wikipedia. Same reason.
Bryce
· 2 years ago
I've been linked to by both Gizmodo and Engadget. Ryan Block has misspelled my name more than once.
Michael.NET
· 2 years ago
Robert,
What Gizmodo did is dirty, which is why I submitted this to Digg. However, noone has a right to have their stuff linked. Obviously they didn't find your content interesting enough (or maybe they didn't know about it, or just didn't want to link). Technorati and Google Blogsearch will return your content with the right keywords. Why so bitter?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Michael: cause those words "don't link off property" still burn.
Of course I don't have an entitlement to links. But, then, I can point out the non-linking behavior, can't I?
It seems that bloggers really aren't looking for interesting information anymore. Just going for the convenient "New York Times" link for the most part. That's inexcusable now that blog search engines are a lot better than they used to be (which is how I found all the non linkers).
John P
· 2 years ago
I don't get it. Slashdot, Digg, AnandTech, etc. "don't link" because they didn't link to your video? Several of the sites you mentioned do link frequently to bloggers.
There is still the fact that sites link nytimes.com and their ilk are linked to more frequently and more authoritatively than blogs, but I don't think this is necessarily unreasonable.
S
· 2 years ago
As a reader of lots of blogs (and lots of non-blog news websites too), I don't usually like links to other blogs. Why? Because the vast majority of blog posts are just regurgitating something someone else has written, and the original source was rarely a blog.
All too often I find myself going through a trail of six or seven linked blogs to get back to the original article on the topic. Each blog adds only a tiny bit of new information, if any at all. Many times, it seems that the only reason for a given blog post is to draw traffic to that blogger's site. They'll post a blog linking to some other source, and then use their own blog's link in comments on other sites, on Digg, etc., rather than just linking to the original source. Or someone will link to their friend's blog, which in turn links to the original source with a sentence or two of commentary. There's no value added there except for the blogger who is getting more traffic. This has grown incredibly tiresome.
Yes, of course there are exceptions. Some very notable exceptions. But I'm sick of worthless blogged regurgitations of other posts and articles. I tend to not even click on links to blogs unless I'm already familiar with the blogger in question, or the material is extremely compelling. I dislike the policy of not linking to blogs, but I have to admit that it's refreshing to read sites that just link to the original source of information...
Michael.NET
· 2 years ago
Robert,
The best thing to do would be to develop a way of "scoring" a site's out going link uniqueness (even maybe taking into account the 3rd level of linking). Picking one url and saying that sites don't link to all blogs based on that one url is misleading. The general trend you note is disturbing, especially if it can be backed up with some empirical evidence.
Anonymous
· 2 years ago
Damn Scoble's doing this snap BS too? Can anyone please tell me what the usefulness of being able to see a preview of a link is? Or a study on the subject?
Presumably, it's to help me decide whether or not I want to visit a website. If I've never visited a website, why would I decide not to if the link interests me? And why would I decide not to if someone reputable like Scoble is linking to it?
I honestly don't get it. As per the subject, I have no problem with them not linking to blogs. Blogs aren't official sources of information, unless it's a corporate blog. Or they could link to blogs and say it's unverified. These gadgets site are fantastic because of their credibility and I wouldn't want that to change because blogs need a little love.
trex
· 2 years ago
I recently made a comment about this at Digg, actually - but about their RSS feeds:
"On of the biggest annoyances at Digg is that they don't include a link to the actual article in their RSS feed (or any links for that matter). The point of RSS is that I can avoid visiting the site just to get my news. It's even worse on my BlackBerry since I have to load tons of useless data. DiggRiver.com is great but there no F&%*%&# RSS feed there. We all know it's to keep pageviews up at Digg...not very user friendly. Come to think of it, Digg is probably the only site that doesn't include links in their RSS feed. Reddit gives you the option of visiting the actual site with the story or visiting reddit for the comments. But the best by far is Techmeme which gives you the description, link to the story, link to the source, and link to techmeme."
Peter Rojas
· 2 years ago
This is ABSURD. We link to blogs every single day of the week. Just because we didn't link to YOUR particular video you've decided that somehow we never link to blogs? This is ridiculously petty and I think you owe us an apology.
Peter Rojas
· 2 years ago
I get it now. Basically you spammed the comments of a bunch of blogs and you're upset that some sites either deleted what you did or didn't incorporate your link into a post. Really weak.
I blogged about this a couple of days ago. Most MSM sources have always refused to link, but I think there is a growing backlash against links among bloggers which I would guess is partially caused by Techmeme and its clones, due to the hierarchical power structure that the Techmeme algorithm has engendered.
Comic Strip Blogger
· 2 years ago
apart from "not linking" don't forget about blacklisting of blogs at engadget! In many situations engadget has not linked to super-unique story not published elsewhere - sometimes even waiting 1-2 months until somebody else has this stort. Example: http://mobilitytoday.com is blacklisted by Engadget.
Comic Strip Blogger
· 2 years ago
" This is ridiculously petty and I think you owe us an apology." --- how dare you Peter Rojas say such thing! It is you who is blacklisting other blogs and behaving in petty way!
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Peter: I wouldn't need to spam anyone if you all would use Google Blog Search and see that I got an exclusive video that goes far beyond the stuff you linked to last night.
innocent bystander
· 2 years ago
Wow. Engadget's Peter Rojas calling Robert Scoble a comments spammer!? I don't think I've read anything this arrogant in a long, long time.
Michael.NET
· 2 years ago
Couple of weird things here...
1) Robert is accused of being a comment spammer, even though his blog has no ads.
2) Robert admits to comment spamming because no one will link his stuff.
3) Robert thinks his stuff is the best, and won't accept anyone else opinion on the matter (even if they're wrong).
Robert man....you're way above this, you've got the clout and the exposure that you shouldn't even care who is and isn't linking you. Maybe we should get Yuvi to run his program on Engadet and Gizmodo to see who all they link to and how often?
LayZ
· 2 years ago
Once again Scoble jumps to conclusions without bothering to do any research or fact checking. But, hey, as long as your get links, what do facts or truth matter?
Todd Cochrane
· 2 years ago
I link all the time but I do laugh when I have had a article up for 2 or 3 days and it shows up on another site with nearly the same content and the site never links back and gives credit. I shrug it off but I have a list of offenders.
It pisses one off quite a bit when you know you have been first in talking about something but yet again some of the sites may have no idea that anything was written by another blog.
John C. Welch
· 2 years ago
Okay, so Robert and Peter Rojas are both sounding like a couple of little kids. "DID TOO! DID NOT! DID TOO! DID NOTINFINITY!"
lordy. Guys, just a link. Calm down already.
On Mac sites linking more. Well, I don't know if you can really say "more", but it's just the thing you do in the mac web world. You link.
normally a fan
· 2 years ago
Sorry, Scoble, but no one owes you a link to your video, and to me a post like this feels like you're trying to bully links out of people.
Admit it: you were angry that you weren't getting linked to and wanted to lash out.
Dawn Douglass
· 2 years ago
It seems to me that Robert is simply trying to stay true to blogging. IMO, all these comments against him are basically saying "we don't link because blogs are beneath us."
Bloggers and their readers CREATED the large sites. Peter Rojas' Engadget wouldn't even exist without people like Robert who spread the word about such sites. To turn around and then accuse Robert of being a "comment spammer" on his site and others is obscenely arrogant and inexcusable IMO. I think Rojas is the one who owes Robert an apology.
And this rationalization about not linking because "the vast majority of blog posts are just regurgitating something someone else has written, and the original source was rarely a blog" misses the whole point. Blogging is word of mouth advertising to friends and acquaintances. Whining about bloggers "regurgitating" is like whining that your potential customers are passing around your television commercial via You Tube.
I find this "biting the hand that feeds you" attitude truly offensive. That Engadget is already copping an old media elitist attitude is troubling to me. I say hurray for Robert Scoble who remembers where he came from and always acts accordingly!!
Peter Rojas
· 2 years ago
I'll reiterate: we link to other blogs ALL the time. To describe as having a policy of not linking to other blogs is absurd and inaccurate. And we don't only link to other blogs, we also link to newspaper articles, press releases, product pages, forum posts, etc.
What Scoble wrote is patently unfair and completely misrepresents the reality of the situation. This isn't an us vs. them situation because we have always linked to blogs and will always do so. The fact that I even have to make a point of this is silly, since anyone who reads the site will see that we link to other blogs all the time.
Ross
· 2 years ago
Talking of deleting comments/posts - what's happening to the Scoble boys?
Peter Rojas -- this is an us vs. them situation because you made it that way. You could have stayed professional and pointed out Robert's error without snidely attacking him as a "petty" comments spammer.
If Robert Scoble is a comment spammer then what the heck must you think of a nobody like me who gives input on your site?
Robert apologized for going overboard. I still don't see an apology from you.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Peter: I've updated my blog eight times in response to feedback here. Including two apologies to you.
But, you still haven't linked to a video that totally is better than the stuff you posted.
I guess you don't want your readers to really see the best information and you'd rather make a stink in my comments here. Just link, that's all I ask. And, no, I won't email you and beg for a link via your "tips" page.
I've linked to you hundreds of times -- all without getting a single email from you or from your staff.
Not to mention I took a video tour of one of your employees' homes, which was an awesome video, and you guys didn't link to that either.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Normally: of course I'm trying to get links. I got a great exclusive. It's not the first time. And I've noticed that fewer and fewer of these sites are organically linking.
One guy said "just email me and I'll give you a link." That's what's wrong here. Just freaking subscribe to the best bloggers and watch for when they post good shit. That's what I'm doing on my link blog. It isn't that hard.
Sam Abuelsamid
· 2 years ago
Robert, I write for AutoBlog and AutoBlogGreen which like Engadget are both part of Weblogs Inc. We constantly link to other sites whether they are blogs, magazines newspapers etc. Aside from posts that are original content, anything that we write that originated somewhere else gets linked. The same goes for pretty much all the WIN sites I've ever checked out.
Anthony Caruana
· 2 years ago
I've noticed the "no linking" thing as well. I've just launched a new blog in the last week and getting link/referral traffic isn't as easy as it used to be. The real tragedy is that there's lots of really good writing and content out there that simply isn't read for that reason.
The larger new/blog sites like Gizmodo, Engadget, etc engage is a lot of "me too" reporting. There's a reasonable volume of original work but often they all seem to be reporting the same story at the same time. There have been a couple of times over the last week that where I've beaten the larger sites to a story but they've all jumped on the story later.
Also, there seems to be less referencing. Someone reads something, posts on it but doesn't link back to the source. While they may not copy/paste the original text, they do give the impression that the thought is their own original idea and not from somewhere else.
Lastly, my observation is that blogging used to be a more of a community than it is now. There seems, to me at least, to be more competition between bloggers for traffic and as a result there's less "off property" linking.
babysitter
· 2 years ago
look at scoble the big baby! so you don't get linked to and you whine about it! what a surprise.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Babysitter: yes, I am a big baby. I helped Engadget make millions by linking to them over and over. Look at the stats. How many links come back?
babysitter
· 2 years ago
millions, are you sure? quite impressive that you personally resulted in them making millions of dollars, can you back that up?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Babysitter: yes, I "helped" make them millions. Weblogsinc sold for $25 million to AOL. Peter Rojas was made a "millionaire" according to Jason Calacanis.
Note, I didn't claim I did that alone, but I certainly did help. I watch the traffic flows here and they all go one way.
Robert McLaws
· 2 years ago
Engadget will link, but they'll crop your pictures if you're using watermarks. They did that to me two weeks ago with my Digital Cable Tuner pics.
And BTW: You guys can get mnad at Scoble... but he kept the post up when he could have just deleted it.
Shawn
· 2 years ago
Peter Rojas: you don’t link to blogs all the time, you link to them when you have to. There’s a big difference!
Engadget often rips off other sites without giving them credit. More than one time I have seen them basically rewrite blog posts but attribute the “source” somewhere else. It can be really obvious though when there are details in the Engadget blog post that aren’t in their supposed sources.
Guy Pelletier
· 2 years ago
Robert, What are you doing? First you delete a post (I know you can't talk about it), then you complain that you are not getting linkedto (Which you then retract). If you keep this up LayZ will be right and the world will be wrong!
Guy the disappointed
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Guy: sorry for disappointing. I'm not perfect.
justelise
· 2 years ago
About the Mac blogs/sites linking to each other - the Mac community is just that.. a community. At the end of the day Mac users communicate with each other about the platform and have the tendency to share their experiences with hardware and software very openly. Word of mouth on a good software can spread easily and turn small developers into minor stars in the Mac community overnight (like the people behind Ecto and other small apps).
As far as the rest of this conversation is concerned, Engadget just lost a subscriber in me solely due to Peter Rojas' comment. I understand that they're a big site and get a lot of traffic and get tons of comments and submissions from bloggers claiming to have exclusives (regardless of whether or not they are legit). I get all of that. What I don't get is why someone as high up the online media food chain as Peter Rojas would come all the way over here and poo poo on this article. It wasn't necessary, it wasn't professional, and it was a huge turn off for me. We know that blogs/sites start to snub the little guys (unless the little guy is truly the first to get the story) when they gain notoriety. It's the nature of the game. Many people fall to the wayside on the path to legitimacy in journalism. Online journalism is the same, but the people falling to the wayside are the small bloggers and the small outfits that haven't made it to the big leagues yet.
If Peter wanted to show his side, he could have written an article on Engadget linking to this one and showed examples of how what was reported here was not the case. Furthermore they could've detailed how to go about getting your blog or content linked to from Engadget (i.e. what the editors look for in an email submission or in a comment that catches their eye) so that people would have a better idea of how to get link love. Instead he did the equivalent of shouting names on a schoolyard. Pity.
I'm with you on this one. If you have a great story, then why not try to get it out to sites where readers would be interested?! I appreciate someone taking the time out to do that and I am amazed at the backlash.
I've done almost 400 posts but I only thought a dozen or so were worthy of telling other people about. When I did, the backlash was instantaneous. I've read that Digg even punishes folks that submit their own links... why? Digg is the perfect place to try to get the word out on your story. It's no different than putting you car on a busy street with a For Sale sign... I should wait for someone to find it in my garage?
Wikipedia's new nofollow policy is one of the latest changes that punish the very folks who helped them become as big as they are (I now mark all Wikipedia links with nofollow).
In protest, I don't visit sites that have closed or no commenting. If their site can't stand up to criticism, then they should close up. I've also removed the nofollow functionality from my comments, which are moderated.
Todd Cochrane
· 2 years ago
I know that i generally try to track a story back to it's source and give credit to the site I foung the article on, but often it is impossible as some sites never refer back to the source. Instead I usually go to technorati or google and have to hunt out the original source of the material. If they do link to a site it is buried below the front page and you have to waste time drilling in to find it.
It drives me crazy and is one of the reasons I rarely reference a article to either engadget or gizmodo. Those two sites seem to have nearly the same exact content anyway almost in the same exact timeline its actually pretty funny.
Between rouge sites that flat our rip your content off and the growing number of mainstream blogs that don't link back is amazing.
I encourage bloggers to take link love away from sites that do not link back.
Todd Zeigler
· 2 years ago
I don't get those criticizing Rojas on this thread. Scoble was annoyed that his video wasn't getting linked to and wrote something that was unfair (he has acknowledged as much). It seems perfectly reasonable for Rojas to defend himself.
I think we can all relate to where Scoble is coming from though. Every blogger has the experience of creating a great piece of content that doesn't go anywhere really or get the links you hoped for. Sort of reassuring that it happens to bigwig like Scoble too.
Roland
· 2 years ago
It is time for you to take a break...
Please?
Steve Paine
· 2 years ago
Content is King and always will be. Regardless of links. Keep writing good stuff and people will find it eventually. Humans are pretty good at sorting out the wheat from the chaff so have faith. Calm down. Get back to your keyboards.
Simon Brocklehurst
· 2 years ago
Wow! Just for once, I don't check Scoble's blog for a little while, and I miss all the action! Damn it!
Some interesting insights into various people's personalities in the comments on this post. Can't wait to see what Loren has to say about all this! LOL!
Guy Pelletier
· 2 years ago
Robert, It is your imperfection that marked this blog a great read. I have noticed that after you left Microsoft, your post tend to be a little more emotionally charge, not much, just a little. My concern with the political crap was that you would start into that whole realm of political BS. The quality of your blogs are still great and they do stimulate an exciting debate, however, even your snarky commenter's are not up to the quality of pre PodTech.
A lot of events are out of your control, and you are obviously struggling with your time commitments, but you put yourselves in this lime-light and a couple of hundred thousand readers want the Scobleizer.
Guy
Christopher Coulter
· 2 years ago
You can link if you wanta, leave your friends behind, and if your friends don't link, well they're no friends of mine. I say, we can link where we want to, A place where they will never find. And we can act like we come from out of this world. Leave the real one far behind. I say, we can link, we can link. Everything out of control.
I guess I missed that Constitutional provision requiring someone to link, it's just a godforsaken blog, they can link, or they can not. And you can read them, or not.
Guy Pelletier
· 2 years ago
Hey Christopher, It's about time we got decent snark in here.
Guy
Eric Rice
· 2 years ago
So naturally, and I say this with love, the prom queens are fighting AND it is in parallel to the meme that we should ditch terms like 'social media' we can all be JUST LIKE THE MEDIA. Haw.
The tech blogosphere is getting funnier the older it gets. Until the funny runs out and we have that little old man smell in our feeds. Crikey, I need a drink.
Paul Roundy
· 2 years ago
# 52, I agree, the posts are not only more emotionally charged, but dare I say, not quite as good?
I know you have a new gig at podtech Robert, but the quality of the blog seems to have diminished. I enjoyed reading what you had to say, not reading about how cool the video you are linking to at podtech is.
In some respects, it feels like you have lost your voice in an effort to promote podtech. Which is understandable since that's how you earn your bread, but something seems to be missing.
fabienne serriere
· 2 years ago
right when i started working for tuaw i got into the extreme habit of using via links, eliot of hack-a-day inspired me to be very adamant about giving credit to tipsters. i still use vias when posting links to netscape today. i can't stress enough how much big time blogs and social networking sites (like the new netscape) really thrive on people who read interesting rss feeds or just haphazardly trawl the web for newness. those findings mean you should be pimping the place you found the cool freshness.
vinnie mirchandani
· 2 years ago
I love you, man - look at the Scoble mentions and links on my Deal Architect blog
and to various industry analysts and various business abd corporate tech focused pubs - boring stuff -)
Chris Leckness
· 2 years ago
I run a smaller tech related blog/community site myself. Engadget and Gizmodo sometimes links my articles reviews. Sometimes they link one that was done by another site in the same time frame too. Just because I feel my review was better than the other doesn't mean that they must link mine instead (or in addition). Would I like them to? Sure! But I am not going to leave comments on their sites linking mine nor am I going to make a big public post about it on my site or my personal blog. If there is something you have a "scoop" on and you get shut out, send a note and ask why. I know that some of the sites are very receptive to these type inquiries.
For any non-ALIST Blogger, getting a link from one of the big guys is nice. The best way (although I am no expert on the subject) to get along with the Engadgets and Gizmodos is to 1)Not send them a tip on EVERYTHING you post. 2)Only submit original content or something exclusive (works most of the time) 3)Actually read their sites. Read before you submit. I have gotten a note from a device manufacturer announcing something only to find that the Big Boys posted the leaked version of the announcement yesterday.
Unlike some big names like Pirillo and Scoble, smaller blogs can't "sit back" and hope that our original stuff gets picked up by these guys. Even though I believe that all their writers subscribe to all the small guys RSS feeds, I don't think much of what they post is pulled from that resource. If I had to guess, 80-90% of their linked content comes from submissions. I know that over time, I have started skipping over certain feeds to get to feeds that I know have new, cool stuff to read. In fact I changed my ordering to place feeds I want to read, but don't want to read now, closer to the bottom.
OK, enough of my babble. In closing, Robert jumped the gun and admitted it. Peter replied to defend his site, he has that right. Maybe he shouldn't have been as passionate in his response. Brian Lam chimed in as well. It's all good. Robert's post could fall under the "write, read, reread in the morning if you still feel it, send it" category.
searchengines
· 2 years ago
-------------------
The non linking policies (even with the NoFollow Option)
could reflect a possible concern about attracting Advertisers with statistics on high pageviews -
There may also be a concern that blogs and other social media are competative - or that they should only link to original content that would not be competative
houseofpolitics
· 2 years ago
what do you mean that they don't link to blogs?
why not just get a website then?
Dario Salvelli
· 2 years ago
Not only Engadged or Gizmodo but also NYTimes and other magazine does NOT link blogs. Especially in the Italian scenario,Repubblica.it,Corriere.it,don't link blogs or other website in article: they have almost a directive internal to the editing.
Michael Markman
· 2 years ago
Robert,
I would never expect to see Engadget or Gizmodo linking to a backstage tour of a semi-conductor fab, any more than I'd expect them to link to a tour of San Quentin or Abu Ghraib.
Sure, most of the stuff they write about is built over silicon, but they write about finished goods, not ingredients. I read both of them to tell me about cool, um, well, gadgets and gizmos. Either to learn about stuff I don't know, or to get their takes on stuff that I know very well.
I get that you have a business to plug. And I get that you'll use whatever juice you have to plug it. Go for it.
But IMHO, if Ryan and Brian start sending you links just cause you're you and just cause your videos are great and exclusive, they will begin to lose the sharp editorial focus that makes me fans of what they do.
Your strength is wide focus. That means it makes sense for you to link to pretty much anything. (Heck, you've even linked to me, thank you.) Blogs that are built on narrow focus shouldn't link to stuff just cause it's good or interesting or important to people they know. They should link to stuff that supports their editorial vision.
Michael Markman
· 2 years ago
P.S. I just made that up. I wanted the thrill of going overboard and issuing a correction and retraction. I'm glad you comments are now on both sites with links to your fabulous fab video.
Yuvi
· 2 years ago
Just for your reference:
Number of times you've linked to: Engadget :34 Gizmodo: 14 Slashdot: 10 Digg: 26 TechMeme:104
This is as of today. And, the Snap preview, in addition to being annoying and useless, broke my scrapper:D
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Yuvi: what about on my link blog? I linked to Engadget more than that in just CES week there.
Yuvi
· 2 years ago
Here are the numbers for the linkblog, the feeds you've posted from: Engadget: 160 EngadgetHD: 50 Gizmodo: 65 Digg:216 SlashDot:25
And, if I were to consider only those from Jan, Engadget: 80 EngadgetHD: 16 Gizmodo:39 Digg: 68 Slashdot:14
And, If I were to consider the links in the posts themselves, Engadget: 478 EngadgetHD: 64 Gizmodo: 67 Digg: 77 Slashdot: 50
My Conclusion? 1. You prefer engadget to gizmodo 2. Almost half the links to engadget are during the CES Run, during Jan.
So, yes, you've definitely linked a lot to engadget, and gizmodo.
Yuvi
· 2 years ago
I would have drawn some pretty graphs, but that would mean I'd have to make it a post rather than a comment. So, no graphs now. Sorry about that...
Yuvi
· 2 years ago
Hope that helps.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Yuvi: I'd love for you to do your analysis of Engadget and Gizmodo's linking!
Yuvi
· 2 years ago
@Scoble: Thanks! It's in the cards, and I hope to complete them before I lose the sexiness of being 15(which isn't long, btw), and I'll be working on it once I finish wikipedia. Any thoughts on specifics? I am pretty stuck, thinking of how to do the comparison...
And, the vid rocks!
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
I'd love to see the same analysis you did of my blog. That rocked.
Yuvi
· 2 years ago
@Scoble: Anyway, it is going to be the same engine, only slightly modified and enhanced. And, thank you once again:D
met
· 2 years ago
Engadget had deleted my comment which referred to the same article appearing in Gizmodo. The comment was deleted. I submitted another comment asking why it was deleted. This comment got deleted too. I understand that it was money for them and they were running a business and all that. I just lost interest after that. I don't think I've commented there ever since. This was like a year and half ago. :)
Guy Pelletier
· 2 years ago
Yuvi, I agree with Robert, the analysis that you did on Scoble's blog covers all the primaries. If you would use that as a standard for blog analysis, you would be able to do comparison across sites.
I would still like to see something on the comments to his posts
Guy
TDavid
· 2 years ago
Scoble stirring the pot, eh?
You are kind of wrong on the New York Times not linking to blogs unless you mean inline comments (?), yes/no?
They linked to one of my posts recently from their business section. Admittedly this linking is rare, but they do link to blogs.
And my contact with the writer of the piece told me that's he's been working on them to make the links inline instead of in the sidebar for the last year. Progress with MSM takes time.
svartling
· 2 years ago
Engadget has linked to my gadget site at: http://www.svartlinks.com/ , but Gizmodo have never linked. But I think they would if they find something interesting :) Maybe your video clip isn't interesting enough? They usually don't post about video clips. And personally I don't want them to do that either. There are too much sites posting links to Youtube video clips already....
Corey Clayton
· 2 years ago
I think all news sites on the net should be featuring trackbacks by now, telling who's linking to who. Isn't that what Web 2.0 is all about? And if I re-report a story, I ALWAYS put the series of people who reported it first (my sources).
Peter
· 2 years ago
We have a blog that is in the same space as a major Weblogs, Inc., blog. We often used to break stories and do not get linked to. The way we have handled it is:
(1) Send friendly e-mail announcements of major stories to go up in the next hour or so directly to one of the Weblogs, Inc., bloggers. This functions as a sort of "we're watching you" notice, without being obnoxious or burning our bridges. If that blogger ever screws us, we switch our announcements to another one.
(2) Make sure we are the source to go to -- our coverage needs to have some exclusive aspect to it, or we really can't blame anyone for not linking to us. This usually involves turning off the computer and getting on the telephone, something bloggers seem to have forgotten how to do.
Still, their tiny "Link" at the bottom doesn't bring in a lot of traffic, and they don't seem to like linking from inside the story, unless it's to AOL.
Thom Singer
· 2 years ago
Rock and Roll...the back an forth, he said - he said, nature of this post is the most entertaining thing I have seen on a blog in a long time. By the time I reached comment #75 I no longer understood the issue at hand, nor do I even care. I just think it is cool that A-List bloggers can have such a nasty pulbic exchange (aka pissing match). If this was Hollywood they would drag Shannon Daugherty out to throw a drink in someone's face.
I think you will set a record for number of comments in a week.
shel israel
· 2 years ago
Robert,
Come in off the ledge on this one. Let these comments trickle off on this one. Only thse who risk going too far will know how far one can go. You blew this one. You apologized. Get on to a new subject.
matto
· 2 years ago
Wow. You win the Biggest Douche of the Week award, and it's still Monday.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
matto: I won that award on Saturday. So, I guess I'm winning it two weeks in a row! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Hank
· 2 years ago
You got paid to shoot the video for Intel did you not?
TAE
· 2 years ago
I've been thinking about linking in blogs a little bit lately (namely putting links on my own blog) as well and am starting to wonder if, at present, I've been slacking in this department purely due to a LACK OF TIME on my part . . .
Weerietwelry
· 1 year ago
Amber said. Jenny obeyed and added another finger, pinching her sister's cunt.
All Comments
lol....blogsphere.
Anyhow, not a big deal. I'm glad you gave me a call so we could clear things up. Have a good weekend, man.
I'll be sure to check out the video later, too.
Digg actually links, you should be able to post yuor story.
What Gizmodo did is dirty, which is why I submitted this to Digg. However, noone has a right to have their stuff linked. Obviously they didn't find your content interesting enough (or maybe they didn't know about it, or just didn't want to link). Technorati and Google Blogsearch will return your content with the right keywords. Why so bitter?
Of course I don't have an entitlement to links. But, then, I can point out the non-linking behavior, can't I?
It seems that bloggers really aren't looking for interesting information anymore. Just going for the convenient "New York Times" link for the most part. That's inexcusable now that blog search engines are a lot better than they used to be (which is how I found all the non linkers).
There is still the fact that sites link nytimes.com and their ilk are linked to more frequently and more authoritatively than blogs, but I don't think this is necessarily unreasonable.
All too often I find myself going through a trail of six or seven linked blogs to get back to the original article on the topic. Each blog adds only a tiny bit of new information, if any at all. Many times, it seems that the only reason for a given blog post is to draw traffic to that blogger's site. They'll post a blog linking to some other source, and then use their own blog's link in comments on other sites, on Digg, etc., rather than just linking to the original source. Or someone will link to their friend's blog, which in turn links to the original source with a sentence or two of commentary. There's no value added there except for the blogger who is getting more traffic. This has grown incredibly tiresome.
Yes, of course there are exceptions. Some very notable exceptions. But I'm sick of worthless blogged regurgitations of other posts and articles. I tend to not even click on links to blogs unless I'm already familiar with the blogger in question, or the material is extremely compelling. I dislike the policy of not linking to blogs, but I have to admit that it's refreshing to read sites that just link to the original source of information...
The best thing to do would be to develop a way of "scoring" a site's out going link uniqueness (even maybe taking into account the 3rd level of linking). Picking one url and saying that sites don't link to all blogs based on that one url is misleading. The general trend you note is disturbing, especially if it can be backed up with some empirical evidence.
Presumably, it's to help me decide whether or not I want to visit a website. If I've never visited a website, why would I decide not to if the link interests me? And why would I decide not to if someone reputable like Scoble is linking to it?
I honestly don't get it. As per the subject, I have no problem with them not linking to blogs. Blogs aren't official sources of information, unless it's a corporate blog. Or they could link to blogs and say it's unverified. These gadgets site are fantastic because of their credibility and I wouldn't want that to change because blogs need a little love.
"On of the biggest annoyances at Digg is that they don't include a link to the actual article in their RSS feed (or any links for that matter). The point of RSS is that I can avoid visiting the site just to get my news. It's even worse on my BlackBerry since I have to load tons of useless data. DiggRiver.com is great but there no F&%*%&# RSS feed there. We all know it's to keep pageviews up at Digg...not very user friendly. Come to think of it, Digg is probably the only site that doesn't include links in their RSS feed. Reddit gives you the option of visiting the actual site with the story or visiting reddit for the comments. But the best by far is Techmeme which gives you the description, link to the story, link to the source, and link to techmeme."
1) Robert is accused of being a comment spammer, even though his blog has no ads.
2) Robert admits to comment spamming because no one will link his stuff.
3) Robert thinks his stuff is the best, and won't accept anyone else opinion on the matter (even if they're wrong).
Robert man....you're way above this, you've got the clout and the exposure that you shouldn't even care who is and isn't linking you. Maybe we should get Yuvi to run his program on Engadet and Gizmodo to see who all they link to and how often?
It pisses one off quite a bit when you know you have been first in talking about something but yet again some of the sites may have no idea that anything was written by another blog.
lordy. Guys, just a link. Calm down already.
On Mac sites linking more. Well, I don't know if you can really say "more", but it's just the thing you do in the mac web world. You link.
Admit it: you were angry that you weren't getting linked to and wanted to lash out.
Bloggers and their readers CREATED the large sites. Peter Rojas' Engadget wouldn't even exist without people like Robert who spread the word about such sites. To turn around and then accuse Robert of being a "comment spammer" on his site and others is obscenely arrogant and inexcusable IMO. I think Rojas is the one who owes Robert an apology.
And this rationalization about not linking because "the vast majority of blog posts are just regurgitating something someone else has written, and the original source was rarely a blog" misses the whole point. Blogging is word of mouth advertising to friends and acquaintances. Whining about bloggers "regurgitating" is like whining that your potential customers are passing around your television commercial via You Tube.
I find this "biting the hand that feeds you" attitude truly offensive. That Engadget is already copping an old media elitist attitude is troubling to me. I say hurray for Robert Scoble who remembers where he came from and always acts accordingly!!
What Scoble wrote is patently unfair and completely misrepresents the reality of the situation. This isn't an us vs. them situation because we have always linked to blogs and will always do so. The fact that I even have to make a point of this is silly, since anyone who reads the site will see that we link to other blogs all the time.
http://franchisepick.com/?p=154
If Robert Scoble is a comment spammer then what the heck must you think of a nobody like me who gives input on your site?
Robert apologized for going overboard. I still don't see an apology from you.
But, you still haven't linked to a video that totally is better than the stuff you posted.
I guess you don't want your readers to really see the best information and you'd rather make a stink in my comments here. Just link, that's all I ask. And, no, I won't email you and beg for a link via your "tips" page.
I've linked to you hundreds of times -- all without getting a single email from you or from your staff.
Not to mention I took a video tour of one of your employees' homes, which was an awesome video, and you guys didn't link to that either.
One guy said "just email me and I'll give you a link." That's what's wrong here. Just freaking subscribe to the best bloggers and watch for when they post good shit. That's what I'm doing on my link blog. It isn't that hard.
The larger new/blog sites like Gizmodo, Engadget, etc engage is a lot of "me too" reporting. There's a reasonable volume of original work but often they all seem to be reporting the same story at the same time. There have been a couple of times over the last week that where I've beaten the larger sites to a story but they've all jumped on the story later.
Also, there seems to be less referencing. Someone reads something, posts on it but doesn't link back to the source. While they may not copy/paste the original text, they do give the impression that the thought is their own original idea and not from somewhere else.
Lastly, my observation is that blogging used to be a more of a community than it is now. There seems, to me at least, to be more competition between bloggers for traffic and as a result there's less "off property" linking.
Note, I didn't claim I did that alone, but I certainly did help. I watch the traffic flows here and they all go one way.
News.com used to not link to outside sites, until I bitched about being sick of doing their investigating without credit: http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/archive....
And BTW: You guys can get mnad at Scoble... but he kept the post up when he could have just deleted it.
Engadget often rips off other sites without giving them credit. More than one time I have seen them basically rewrite blog posts but attribute the “source” somewhere else. It can be really obvious though when there are details in the Engadget blog post that aren’t in their supposed sources.
What are you doing? First you delete a post (I know you can't talk about it), then you complain that you are not getting linkedto (Which you then retract).
If you keep this up LayZ will be right and the world will be wrong!
Guy the disappointed
As far as the rest of this conversation is concerned, Engadget just lost a subscriber in me solely due to Peter Rojas' comment. I understand that they're a big site and get a lot of traffic and get tons of comments and submissions from bloggers claiming to have exclusives (regardless of whether or not they are legit). I get all of that. What I don't get is why someone as high up the online media food chain as Peter Rojas would come all the way over here and poo poo on this article. It wasn't necessary, it wasn't professional, and it was a huge turn off for me. We know that blogs/sites start to snub the little guys (unless the little guy is truly the first to get the story) when they gain notoriety. It's the nature of the game. Many people fall to the wayside on the path to legitimacy in journalism. Online journalism is the same, but the people falling to the wayside are the small bloggers and the small outfits that haven't made it to the big leagues yet.
If Peter wanted to show his side, he could have written an article on Engadget linking to this one and showed examples of how what was reported here was not the case. Furthermore they could've detailed how to go about getting your blog or content linked to from Engadget (i.e. what the editors look for in an email submission or in a comment that catches their eye) so that people would have a better idea of how to get link love. Instead he did the equivalent of shouting names on a schoolyard. Pity.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3180
I'm with you on this one. If you have a great story, then why not try to get it out to sites where readers would be interested?! I appreciate someone taking the time out to do that and I am amazed at the backlash.
I've done almost 400 posts but I only thought a dozen or so were worthy of telling other people about. When I did, the backlash was instantaneous. I've read that Digg even punishes folks that submit their own links... why? Digg is the perfect place to try to get the word out on your story. It's no different than putting you car on a busy street with a For Sale sign... I should wait for someone to find it in my garage?
Wikipedia's new nofollow policy is one of the latest changes that punish the very folks who helped them become as big as they are (I now mark all Wikipedia links with nofollow).
In protest, I don't visit sites that have closed or no commenting. If their site can't stand up to criticism, then they should close up. I've also removed the nofollow functionality from my comments, which are moderated.
It drives me crazy and is one of the reasons I rarely reference a article to either engadget or gizmodo. Those two sites seem to have nearly the same exact content anyway almost in the same exact timeline its actually pretty funny.
Between rouge sites that flat our rip your content off and the growing number of mainstream blogs that don't link back is amazing.
I encourage bloggers to take link love away from sites that do not link back.
I think we can all relate to where Scoble is coming from though. Every blogger has the experience of creating a great piece of content that doesn't go anywhere really or get the links you hoped for. Sort of reassuring that it happens to bigwig like Scoble too.
Please?
Some interesting insights into various people's personalities in the comments on this post. Can't wait to see what Loren has to say about all this! LOL!
It is your imperfection that marked this blog a great read. I have noticed that after you left Microsoft, your post tend to be a little more emotionally charge, not much, just a little.
My concern with the political crap was that you would start into that whole realm of political BS. The quality of your blogs are still great and they do stimulate an exciting debate, however, even your snarky commenter's are not up to the quality of pre PodTech.
A lot of events are out of your control, and you are obviously struggling with your time commitments, but you put yourselves in this lime-light and a couple of hundred thousand readers want the Scobleizer.
Guy
Everything out of control.
I guess I missed that Constitutional provision requiring someone to link, it's just a godforsaken blog, they can link, or they can not. And you can read them, or not.
It's about time we got decent snark in here.
Guy
The tech blogosphere is getting funnier the older it gets. Until the funny runs out and we have that little old man smell in our feeds. Crikey, I need a drink.
I know you have a new gig at podtech Robert, but the quality of the blog seems to have diminished. I enjoyed reading what you had to say, not reading about how cool the video you are linking to at podtech is.
In some respects, it feels like you have lost your voice in an effort to promote podtech. Which is understandable since that's how you earn your bread, but something seems to be missing.
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UT...
On my New Florence blog I am less generous but not zero...
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UT...
since my readership is more on the enterprise side, I do tend to link to a group of bloggers collectively called the Enterprise Irregulars
http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/
and to various industry analysts and various business abd corporate tech focused pubs - boring stuff -)
For any non-ALIST Blogger, getting a link from one of the big guys is nice. The best way (although I am no expert on the subject) to get along with the Engadgets and Gizmodos is to 1)Not send them a tip on EVERYTHING you post. 2)Only submit original content or something exclusive (works most of the time) 3)Actually read their sites. Read before you submit. I have gotten a note from a device manufacturer announcing something only to find that the Big Boys posted the leaked version of the announcement yesterday.
Unlike some big names like Pirillo and Scoble, smaller blogs can't "sit back" and hope that our original stuff gets picked up by these guys. Even though I believe that all their writers subscribe to all the small guys RSS feeds, I don't think much of what they post is pulled from that resource. If I had to guess, 80-90% of their linked content comes from submissions. I know that over time, I have started skipping over certain feeds to get to feeds that I know have new, cool stuff to read. In fact I changed my ordering to place feeds I want to read, but don't want to read now, closer to the bottom.
OK, enough of my babble. In closing, Robert jumped the gun and admitted it. Peter replied to defend his site, he has that right. Maybe he shouldn't have been as passionate in his response. Brian Lam chimed in as well. It's all good. Robert's post could fall under the "write, read, reread in the morning if you still feel it, send it" category.
The non linking policies (even with the NoFollow Option)
could reflect a possible concern about attracting Advertisers with statistics on high pageviews -
There may also be a concern that blogs and other social media are competative - or that they should only link to original content that would not be competative
why not just get a website then?
I would never expect to see Engadget or Gizmodo linking to a backstage tour of a semi-conductor fab, any more than I'd expect them to link to a tour of San Quentin or Abu Ghraib.
Sure, most of the stuff they write about is built over silicon, but they write about finished goods, not ingredients. I read both of them to tell me about cool, um, well, gadgets and gizmos. Either to learn about stuff I don't know, or to get their takes on stuff that I know very well.
I get that you have a business to plug. And I get that you'll use whatever juice you have to plug it. Go for it.
But IMHO, if Ryan and Brian start sending you links just cause you're you and just cause your videos are great and exclusive, they will begin to lose the sharp editorial focus that makes me fans of what they do.
Your strength is wide focus. That means it makes sense for you to link to pretty much anything. (Heck, you've even linked to me, thank you.) Blogs that are built on narrow focus shouldn't link to stuff just cause it's good or interesting or important to people they know. They should link to stuff that supports their editorial vision.
Number of times you've linked to:
Engadget :34
Gizmodo: 14
Slashdot: 10
Digg: 26
TechMeme:104
This is as of today. And, the Snap preview, in addition to being annoying and useless, broke my scrapper:D
Engadget: 160
EngadgetHD: 50
Gizmodo: 65
Digg:216
SlashDot:25
And, if I were to consider only those from Jan,
Engadget: 80
EngadgetHD: 16
Gizmodo:39
Digg: 68
Slashdot:14
And, If I were to consider the links in the posts themselves,
Engadget: 478
EngadgetHD: 64
Gizmodo: 67
Digg: 77
Slashdot: 50
For January?
Engadget: 265
EngadgetHD: 17
Gizmodo: 50
Digg: 19
Slashdot: 21
My Conclusion?
1. You prefer engadget to gizmodo
2. Almost half the links to engadget are during the CES Run, during Jan.
So, yes, you've definitely linked a lot to engadget, and gizmodo.
And, the vid rocks!
I understand that it was money for them and they were running a business and all that. I just lost interest after that.
I don't think I've commented there ever since. This was like a year and half ago.
:)
I agree with Robert, the analysis that you did on Scoble's blog covers all the primaries. If you would use that as a standard for blog analysis, you would be able to do comparison across sites.
I would still like to see something on the comments to his posts
Guy
You are kind of wrong on the New York Times not linking to blogs unless you mean inline comments (?), yes/no?
They linked to one of my posts recently from their business section. Admittedly this linking is rare, but they do link to blogs.
And my contact with the writer of the piece told me that's he's been working on them to make the links inline instead of in the sidebar for the last year. Progress with MSM takes time.
http://www.svartlinks.com/ , but Gizmodo have never linked. But I think they would if they find something interesting :)
Maybe your video clip isn't interesting enough? They usually don't post about video clips.
And personally I don't want them to do that either. There are too much sites posting links to Youtube video clips already....
(1) Send friendly e-mail announcements of major stories to go up in the next hour or so directly to one of the Weblogs, Inc., bloggers. This functions as a sort of "we're watching you" notice, without being obnoxious or burning our bridges. If that blogger ever screws us, we switch our announcements to another one.
(2) Make sure we are the source to go to -- our coverage needs to have some exclusive aspect to it, or we really can't blame anyone for not linking to us. This usually involves turning off the computer and getting on the telephone, something bloggers seem to have forgotten how to do.
Still, their tiny "Link" at the bottom doesn't bring in a lot of traffic, and they don't seem to like linking from inside the story, unless it's to AOL.
I think you will set a record for number of comments in a week.
Come in off the ledge on this one. Let these comments trickle off on this one. Only thse who risk going too far will know how far one can go. You blew this one. You apologized. Get on to a new subject.