Blogging Has Gone Nuts

There is a reason that I've been missing for awhile.  Blogging has gone nuts.  Is it me, or has it lost its meaning and importance?

With the news of the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music I went to google just to see what comes up under search.  Besides the fact that people have named it "Nokia's First Touch Screen" which it actually isn't (7710, 6108), I find it amusing that once Nokia announces a handset people scramble to places like GoDaddy or wherever to be the first ones to snatch up a domain or 2 with the product name.  Is this how the game is played?  Lol I actually know someone who does this and is so proud about it... but I still don't get the point.

At one point, blogging meant something, at least to me.  One's own piece of journalism in where they do hard research to provide thorough output.  Now it seems like its become a world of cut, copy and paste.  I'm tired of fighting with sites to remove content that at first was original but then became the popular article on a 2 week old site with Google ads attached to it.  (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)

So what the hell is this madness we call blogging?  Are there rules to the game that I didn't read? 

Recently I've been sitting back reading my RSS feeds and I cannot begin to tell you how many sites have the same thing in repetitive fashion... most of them fairly new.   It's like watching a soap opera and then taking a break.  When you come back the storyline seems to be right where you left off.  Lol

A wise man (RB) once told me that there was nothing wrong in taking a break every once in awhile .... I just might continue to do that.

Comments

[Gomcoite]

This is so true. All the hard work done on research ends up with cut copy paste + google ads. on sometimes not only a few hrs old site. i bet he might copy this too, u knw who! haha...

im glad some1 feels the same as i do... what say guys!

[Ricky Cadden]

Best way to combat that? Make the content your own. No one can copy your own thoughts and feelings.

[Darla Mack]

@ Ricky
Apparently you must not have seen your "original thoughts and feelings" copied and pasted with no link to original location.

[Mark Webster]

Most blogs are here today, gone tomorrow utter wastes of space, yours is a mighty exception Darla, fight the good fight etc :)

[Ms. Jen]

Here is how I solved my problem with content scrapers:

1) If they are on a free hosted service (like blogger, etc.), I report them to the abuse folks. Blogger has a bit of a complicated process, but I did follow through on one nasty a**hole last year.

2) Use .htaccess to deny all image hotlinking. (Typepad should have a setting for this)

3) I reconfigured all my Feeds to only give a 40 word summary, so now the content scrapers can only scrape a sentence or two. This is how most of them lift the content - via Feed.

4) Last but not least, let it go. If they are copy and pasting, then let it go. They are scum. Don't link to them, report them to their service providers or Technorati as the scum they are and let it go.

Darla - if you want me to help you configure any of the above, I will.

;o)