Be Bloggable
Cory Doctorow has a recent article in Information Week on how to get bloggers to write about you. It’s pitched to the world in general, but much of the advice is pertinent to bloggers as well. The whole thing is well worth your time, but I’ll quote a couple of paragraphs that say things I’ve said before, only Cory says them better:
What makes a site blogger-unfriendly? I’ve been keeping a list for the past couple of months. These are simple design and deployment mistakes that kept me from picking up a link and reposting it where millions might find it. Here’s the list, a kind of anti-checklist for anyone who’s spending money and time trying to get a message out:
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Linking policies are ridiculous. There is no legal right to control who gets to link your Website (no more than you have the right to control who gets to hand out driving directions to your office). The lawyer who advised you to put up a “linking policy” describing the “terms and conditions” under which the world is allowed to link to your site is an idiot who owes you your money back. Standing on your lawn, shaking your fist at the airplane flying overhead and shouting “Get out of my sky” makes you look like a dork — so does threatening text about linking to you. At best, you’ll make bloggers snort derisively and then go link to someone else.
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Forget the “copyright protection” Javascript. Some sites have bizarre Javascript that pops up snotty little copyright messages when you try to right-click on an image to save it. OK, we get the point: you don’t want people to copy your images. We’ll just move on. Enjoy your obscurity.
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yeah, i can’t STAND that when i get some creepy popup saying COPYRIGHT PROTECTED! usually i just use the copy function from the upper taskbar instead. what really disgusts me is when i’m really just trying to bookmark. all of a sudden, NO SOUP FOR YOU! heh, fuck you too, bitch.
I figure if someone is uptight enough to say who can and can’t link to them they must be worried about who’s reading them. So, I don’t.
I’ve never understood anyone not wanting you to send traffic their way. That’s always been a head scratcher. Issues with bandwidth only means you should learn more about your options and quit the cheap service you’re using.
As to the people trying to protect their pages, I agree that people shouldn’t post on their site copyrighted works without permission. But 80% of the time I find those “protected” pages they’re protecting MS clipart, animated gifs that are public domain, and images they stole from elsewhere.
And as to the protection…that’s so web 1.0. If anyone truly wants a copy of what you have, they’re going to get it.