DISQUS

Justin Levy · 5 months ago

Besides a decline in linking, there has also been a decline in commenting. That's why services like Backtype Connect are so great because you get a view of all of the conversation taking place around a post.

Keenan · 5 months ago

Completely agree, although I wouldn't say they are declining, but rather they are being left twtitter rather than on the blog. Comments are taking the form of retweets, with opinion. I'm not a fan. It broadcasts ones thought about a post, but it doesn't allow the conversation. I think Disqus should add a tweet this comment feature, creating a short url directly to a comment. That might change, for the positive, how people respond to blog posts.

Scott Gould · 5 months ago

Hence Disqus is such an excellent tool.

Your comments, IMO, are just as important as your blogging - and more important that your tweets. The fact that disqus tracks 1. what I am saying across the web, and 2. the social media reactions, is what web 2010 seems to be about - the aggregation of everything you do online.

If only one could comment on FriendFeed and have disqus add it as a comment.. the future?

Brandon Mendelson · 5 months ago

I agree with Keenan. I see more comments occur, if they do at all, via Twitter and Friendfeed then I do on the actual blog. The other issue I'm seeing is that 95% of my traffic is from Twitter and Friendfeed. So while that is awesome, I worry about what it means in terms of potential search traffic because there are not as many blogs linking to us as there are Twitter users.

It's exciting though.

Keenan · 5 months ago

I am seeing the same thing. Before Twitter, people linked to blogs not only as a way to share information but as a "favor" in hopes of getting linked back. It was understood that links increased your Google juice and therefore people linked to get linked back. Linking to improve the exposure of a blog is no longer necessary. The selfish reason to link is gone.

Scott Gould · 5 months ago

Interesting thought that the selfish tit-for-tat ideology is gone. Certainly for me - not a socialmediator by any means - even I get the majority of traffic through twitter and friendfeed. And of course, if I retweet you, it's rare (unless I know you) that you will feel obliged to retweet back.

This is why social collectives - those groups of twitters / friendfeeders / bloggers are an interesting development, where they are all inclined to retweet and link to one another

Keenan · 5 months ago

I'll retweet you Scott! :)

Scott Gould · 5 months ago

Thanks! You've been followed on Twitter!

Alex Damien · 5 months ago

Very interesting post. I hadn't thought about links and tweeting that way. I still also prefer linking, even if tweeting is easier and faster.
Anyway, thanks for the post and I'm liking your blog a lot, so I'll be hanging around. Keep on rocking!

Ben Atlas · 5 months ago

There is an elephant in the room! People send more links but there is a fatigue of spam. People don't click on links as they use to . So everyone sends even more links with a hope that some of them will get clicked and this gets the spam situation even worse. There was a noteworthy post here about the the decilne of links in blogs.
http://www.apt11d.com/2009/07/the-blogosphere-2...
Even when people link, they don't click!

Chris Bursey · 5 months ago

Interesting content, thank you for your insight..

cyberdoyle · 5 months ago

Agree, and would also add that in the old days there were very few blogs on any particular subject, and linking them helped, and they were regularly updated. Now there are so many you can't link to them all, and nobody wants to anyway, it is all quick links, quick reads and move on. Everything is moving and changing so fast...
...I think twitter is doing a great job in the circumstances.

Scott Gould · 5 months ago

My thought, then, is what do we about the fact that we are drowning in content?

Content is a commodity, clarity is king. What will facility that kind of content that actually causes action, and thereby it, change?

I'm convinced social media has to be more than bloggers blogging about blogging, whilst the average person has peaked with using Facebook...

partywedo · 5 months ago

Wow, with the rapid fire changes in connectivity, I find myself chasing my tail on some days.
Now I have to figure out how to retweet, when I just started learning how to tweet!

Friedbeef · 5 months ago

This trend is worrying because all Tweets are nofollow.

MayankDhingra · 5 months ago

Spot on Louis. I think people are becoming more lazy as the web is growing/expanding.

It's a lot easy to Retweet as compared to linking and things would be worse when apps/twitter interface start having a retweet button.

I feel Blogging on the whole is no more the preferred medium and people would get more hooked to microblogging/lifestreaming etc for the "instant gratification" it offers. @replies and RT's come a lot faster and easily than linkbacks and comments on a blog and unfortunately I don't see this changing

cyberdoyle · 5 months ago

Apps already have 'retweet' button.
I use mashdeck/tweetdeck and after checking good tweetlinks always retweet good ones, as I am following different people to those who follow me.

Dan Thornton · 5 months ago

Just out of interest, has the drop in authority meant that your position in the blog rankings has also gone down, or has everyone suffered from a similar percentage drop?

I'm hearing the 'blogging is dead' meme even from non-techy friends and family now, and I still keep fighting hard to dispute it - blogging has no more inherent right to success than a print product, TV, radio, Twitter or a personal homepage, but I think it offers a value that isn't being provided by many alternative mediums at the moment.

I engage with blog content and links in a different and complimentary way to my consumption of Twitter information, and the two cross over in my thinking in the same way as I can consume content via TV, laptop, print, radio, mobile depending on where I am and which device is most convenient.

Hopefully the Technorati rankings will finally start to include links via microblogging in their calculations soon (possibly not in the same manner as Feedburner/Friendfeed), but at the same time, I think that the decline in blogging as a mainstream fad is actually a good thing as it will hopefully reduce the number of people bandwagon jumping for a short period of time and then decrying it as a medium.

I'm almost at the 10k Twitter update mark, and I still don't see myself giving up blogging for many, many years as a place to publish thoughts which I can't distill into 140 characters, or for summarising or aggregating conversations etc. It also allows for greater consistency in subject/ tone of voice etc than I can maintain in a constant flurry of @replies.