A response to Alec Muffett's recent post "A disappointed (occasional) reader…" on his excellent blog.
I'm sure Alec won't mind me having posted the following comment in response to his article:
Hi Alec,
Although I sympathise, especially as a fellow 'blog writer it appears one has to produce a very regular cadence to ensure continued, and growing, readership, I have to agree with your reader, mentioned above.
The fashion for producing a blog post which is simply titled "Links for DD-MM-YYYY" and contains nothing but links is becoming ubiquitous - and even sadder is in full sway across blogs.sun.com.
Like anyone I like to see interesting sites and links, however I go to blogs to read blogs, to gather opinion, see what peeps are chatting about, etc., etc., not to checkout someone else's bookmarks.
I believe that one has to think very hard about what blog postings are for, and if indeed "Links for DD-MM-YYYY" type postings are an adequate and appropriate mechanism for sharing bookmarks with one's readers.
Personally I feel that links, and bookmarks, are acceptable if introduced to the readers during a posting (or even as reference at the end of a posting), for me there has to be some posting 'meat' to go with my 'link' vegetables (terrible analogy, but it won't be the worst thing you've forgiven me of).
However I suspect that whilst the "Links for DD-MM-YYYY" helps to produce a regular cadence, and continued readership, it will sustain it's use as a blog posting across the blogosphere.
And for the record I really like your blog, as you can probably guess from the number of comments I keep leaving.
All the best, Happy New Year, etc.,
Wayne
I'll be trying my best to avoid using blog posts as bookmark aggregators, but this is a personal decision, and each to their own.
To back up my assertion that the "Links for DD-MM-YYYY" type posts have become a staple at blogs.sun.com checkout this link to blogs.sun.com's search facility, as of today it returns 1,092 results for posts which include "Links for".
In fact, given the number of people writing these types of posts, perhaps that's where I'm going wrong... 
I’m almost sorry I encouraged Alec Muffett on the date links, because generally speaking, they are usually not very engaging to me as a rule. It just so happened he posted a link the week before that I had already shared with *someone I love* after it first posted in April 2007. It was nice for me to see others share the same link, although I shared it differently than the way Alec did it. I don’t have a blog.
You made some good points to Alec about retaining readership and format and so forth that I hope Alec will give more thought to.
It is nice to be exposed to links you might not otherwise find that delight, inform, whatever. That makes me of two minds about it. I am not familiar with the “page 2” concept mentioned by one of Alec’s commentors. There’s more than one way to attract and retain readership, no doubt. It’s good to know what their preferences are.
Happy New Year!
Posted by Carolyn on January 15, 2008 at 11:53 PM GMT #