I recently blogged about my disdain for so-called ‘bloggers’ who rip and run with your content. You know the drill. You stay up late researching and writing a post, only to find it re-posted (at varying lengths) on other people’s blogs. Sure, they’re kind enough to attribute the story to you. But let’s be honest; how many people are gong to click-through to your Website to read other articles.
We all like to think that our writing is strong enough to lure people in to read more and earn them as a subscriber. But the majority of Web surfers generally take a glance and move on.
This tactic of copy and pasting within in a niche, does NOT make you an authority on a subject. In fact, I’m not even sure it should qualify as blogging.
Here in New York, how would the New York Times feel if the Daily News started to publish their stories – without permission – in there entirely. Even with proper attribution, it’s illegal and would never fly.
I’m sure there are plenty of you out there who take this route and do consider yourself bloggers. I’m open minded and willing to consider both sides of the argument. So let’s get the debate started:
If you grab content from multiple blogs, and do not offer your own commentary, should you be considered a blogger?
On the flip side, I will say that I thoroughly enjoy both the content and traffic generation offered by “blog catalog” Websites like Alltop.
However, I say these folks trying to pass themselves off as bloggers are nothing more than human content aggregators. What’s your take?
