Website Marketing Bubbles

A few things cropped up over the last few days that really have me wondering about all this web marketing that's going on. You have the Technorati, you have the search engines, you have the time honored tradition of swapping links (which is modernized as a blogroll), and I really have to wonder... what's the point? And, at what point does it become 'done in poor taste'?

Oddly enough, while I've been thinking about all of this, I've been doing Q&A on the Quotations on the site. I've spent at least 10 hours doing it during this cycle of consciousness, going through and fixing errors and breaking authors into separate pages based on their last name. I'm not really doing it for anyone but myself, but based on the statistics of the site, other people are getting some value from it. There are Amazon affiliate links in there for books and CDs from wherever quotes came from, and now and then someone buys something and helps pay for the hosting and my experimentation. That said, my motives are different from a lot of people that I know on the web. Sure, it would be nice if the website could pay my bills and I could work on it full time - but I already spend at least 20 hours a week on it on slow weeks. Why do I do that? Because it stretches me. Because I can handle the technical side and I can handle the writing. And maybe that has something to do with my perspective as well.

I don't know. What I do know is that all this gaming of the systems like Technorati and Google seems to create these bubbles that are quite similar to economic bubbles - thus the picture at top. Granted, it's human nature to wish to be appreciated for something that you do, but it seems to me that the blogosphere is largely a group of codependants chasing bubbles.

Perhaps I should not say that in polite company, but if you're company of mine then you're unlikely to be considered polite by those who would consider me impolite.

I'd been reading up on economic bubbles and I'm planning to write something along the lines of the same as could be seen with copyrights and patents (half of 'intellectual property' law), but reality conspired to create this post. I don't know whether people work hard on the websites other than in marketing, but it seems marketing has gained dominance over product once again. I do know that there are weblogs out there that are set up only to reflect other people's sites and derive income from RSS feeds which the 'owner' of the weblog doesn't contribute to. And people see that as OK. I don't care if they use the RSS feeds here, really, and I even view it as a form of welfare for the intellectually impoverished who are unable to create. I suppose an Ayn Rand lean has a bit to do with that. They aren't stealing from me. Unless they peddle it for purely commercial use... Wait.

If I set up a site that I don't contribute to, channel RSS feeds into it, and then slap advertising on it... is that commercial? Maybe, maybe...

But anyway, how much is too much? Sure, some marketing has to happen. But first came the search engines, and people have gamed those to death so much that periodically, the bubble does burst when the search engines change their algorithms such that they do not allow as much gaming. You see, search engines are actually concerned about people finding quality things. Technorati and sites like it don't seem to focus on that as much. That system is wide open to bubbles, and the top 100 sites are brilliant examples of that - where hype feeds hype. And Technorati makes money from this, which isn't a bad thing - but I don't view it as a good, or even great thing either. I don't care which blogs Doc Searls reads, or Michelle Malkin for that matter - so I ignore it. It's somewhat amusing that this even exists, because it's sort of like people wanting to sniff the intellectual underwear of technorati bloggers. Odd. Amusing. It doesn't affect me... or does it?

The whole thing has been and continues to be a popularity contest. Popularity doesn't mean too much to me. In fact, some might say that I take pains to not be popular - and that's true, to a point. I build things to last, not rise and fall at the whim of popularity. I don't write for the now, I write for the future so I can look back at the past. Thus search engine indexing is more important to me, and when doing that I'm conservative since I know that the search engines change the rules now and then. A lot of the most recent links to this site have been to content I wrote years ago... sitting there, and someone finds it and thinks it's brand new. It's new to them. Content is, indeed, king.

I wrote a post a while back, and this guy in England was so very excited about the Alert Retrieval Cache concept, so he told me he fired an email to some other bloggers who are high in the Technorati ranks. I wasn't impressed, with good reason - as I expected, they didn't mention it. I got one email from one of these technoratishly high (stoned?) bloggers, and they said they wanted to know more about it. I fired an email back and asked them what they wanted to know. I mean, if I have to speak and spell for the kids in the technoratisphere, things are pretty bad. No response to my question. No surprise. My feelings weren't hurt, because I understand that most of these people are narcissists with exhibitionist tendencies. And that's OK. But I won't drink your Kool Aid unless you stop bogarting the joint.

In the end, we all do things as we do. There are some really good blogs out there that don't even rank in Technorati, but they will likely not be popular because they don't just regurgitate some text and toss a link to something they don't have a clue about.

So, I don't know. I think the systems have been gamed to death. And while I think that, it doesn't bother me because I don't write for popular audiences. But observing people who do write for popular audiences, who are so wounded when everything that they write doesn't rate... that's cheaper amusement than television. Unfortunately, it's the same quality level.

Blow all the bubbles you want, but keep the smoke filled ones away from my posterior. :-)