I keep active accounts at various sites that pull in my online activity, e.g. Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook, but don’t spend a lot of time in there. But Plaxo is now under my fur and a good scratch is not getting rid of this blogging itch.
Plaxo let me add appropriate links for it to syndicate in my blog feed, flickr, etc that it publishes as a “pulse”- more than just the feed content, it actually publishes my full content. That is not the smelly part, though they do make the links to the real content rather small and obscure way down at the bottom.
It’s how they handle comments. If someone comments on my flickr photo as it is rendered in Plaxo– the comment goes inside Plaxo. This morning, I got a comment from a former colleague to my ACDC in Excel post (why is it the silly posts get the comments)… and that comment is inside Plaxo (behind a login) not on my blog.
No, I did not get a comment. I got an email that said, “Someone commented on something you said” and a link.
Comment notification without the comment text (so I can decide if it is worth my time to go read) is a strategy right out of the 1990s- “sticky” web sites? Trapping users inside your site?? Blecchhhh. When I think of “sticky” I think of stepping barefoot in dog poop or chewing gum. So their comment notification scheme is right out of the last decade. Brilliant. Bring back the blink tag and some animated GIFs and they will be set.
But I am not going to leave a comment on MY blog post that is published on MY site inside THEIR website. There are plenty of openAPIs to allow comments to get to my blog, or they might have used trackback or something.
I don’t care if my blog posts are inside Plaxo. But as a stand, I refuse to post my comment replies to MY content inside THEIR walled garden.
Sorry Richard, I’d love to have a dialogue and respond to your question (and I may just because I now you) but I am not going to do it inside a stinky flawed web strategy.
Greeeeeee, gotta go chase a cat or chew up a slipper to relieve my tension.
