Thursday, September 07, 2006

If You Want A Vacation, Take A Vacation, And Spare Me The Guest Bloggers

A WSJ article takes a look at the vacation conundrum for bloggers.

In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.

I don't understand the worry. I've got a list of blogs I look at each day. It costs me a couple seconds to access each blog and see if its been updated. If it hasn't been, I move on to the next one. A blog would have to go stale for weeks on end before I would say, "screw it", and drop it from my list. But what I don't like is having to wade through a bunch of guest posts. I'm there to read that blogger, not the guest posters. If I'd wanted to read them, I'd be looking at their blogs. It just wastes my time to wade through a confusion of inane posts that are only there to "keep the lights on". If a blogger thinks that the folks whom he wants to use as guest bloggers deserve the boost in visibility, then it should already be happening in the course of normal posting. If someone is that great, they should already be getting links from that blogger. If, over time, I agree that they're that great, they'll already be on my list. I won't need to be reading them on another person's blog. And if I don't think they're that great, then I wouldn't enjoy reading them on another person's blog. In fact, I'd be annoyed.

If you want to take a vacation, do it. I can handle it. I won't abandon you. And I'll appreciate the time you'll be saving me by leaving your blog un-updated!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Also, guest posters often post the same piece at their own blog, and if I read their blog too, it just becomes a nuisance. Like you, I don't bother with it, myself. When I go on vacation (so rare) I shove up some links to some of my more interesting pieces and figure folks can entertain themselves while I'm gone! :-)