Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs (I went overboard, read updates)
Interesting how the big gadget sites, like Gizmodo and Engadget, don’t link to blogs UPDATE8: I went overboard. Sometimes I do that. I apologize to Engadget and Gizmodo. Move along, nothing to see here (but read the comments anyway, they are where the real action is).
Gizmodo went even further. They deleted a comment of mine, on this post about Intel, where I pointed out I had some video about the Intel announcements last night that’d add onto their posts. UPDATE5: Just called Brian Lam at Gizmodo, he says he didn’t delete the comment and is looking into it. UPDATE 6: Lockhart Steele says my comment was stuck in an approval queue. Engadget hasn’t linked, but hasn’t removed my comment, either. Engadget wins!
It’s interesting how everyone links to the New York Times, who of course doesn’t link to blogs, but very few bloggers will link to another blogger who got access to something they didn’t.
I’ve noticed this “not linking” trend is growing on blogs. It used to be bloggers used to link to everything. Now you hardly find a link on any blog. What’s going on here? Steve Gillmor wins! :-)
I remember a former boss of mine telling me “do not link off property.” Translation: the audience is treated like a roach. You can walk into the gadget site, but you dare not go to another blog.
What’s funny is that this opens up opportunities. I link to all the closed systems (that’s what my link blog is all about). I want my readers to have the best and most complete information on a topic.
I guess Gizmodo and Engadget don’t really want that for their readers.
UPDATE: Slashdot doesn’t link either. Neither does AnandTech. Neither does Hot Hardware.
UPDATE 2: Neither does Daily Tech. Neither does Silicon Valley Sleuth. Neither does the Tech News Journal. Neither does PCLaunches. Neither does BDUO. Or GPUWiki. Neither does SEO Blogger. Neither does Fanboy Tech Web. Neither does BitTech. Neither does ZDNet.
Digg doesn’t link. Neither does the “laziest blogger on the Net” (although he has the best excuse!)
Emiratesmac DOES link. I subscribed. TUAW DOES link. I’m already subscribed. Why are the Mac sites better at linking?
TechMeme DOES link. Any wonder why that site is gaining more and more readers every day? And people think it’s elitist! The problem is that it’s the least elitist of all these “non-linking” blogs.
UPDATE3: Last Podcast DOES link.
UPDATE4: Peter Rojas, in my comments, says I owe Engadget an apology. They did link to my Bill Gates’ lunch video, so I agree I probably went overboard. But even that link came after the news had broken. But, I am sorry for going overboard.
UPDATE7: Ars Technical DOES link.
UPDATE8: I apologize to Gizmodo and Engadget. They link to blogs. Just not mine unless I raise a stink.
UPDATE9: The Guardian DOES link. JD Lasica does NOT link. Overclock.net does NOT link. Vinnie Mirchandani does NOT link. Flexbeta does NOT link. ITNews does NOT link.
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January 27th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I guess this list sucks. Wikipedia does not link either.
Digg actually links, you should be able to post yuor story.
January 27th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Anatoly: if I submit my own links to Digg the community says I’m an asshole. So I don’t do it. Just like I don’t edit Wikipedia. Same reason.
January 27th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I’ve been linked to by both Gizmodo and Engadget. Ryan Block has misspelled my name more than once.
January 27th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Robert,
What Gizmodo did is dirty, which is why I submitted this to Digg. However, noone has a right to have their stuff linked. Obviously they didn’t find your content interesting enough (or maybe they didn’t know about it, or just didn’t want to link). Technorati and Google Blogsearch will return your content with the right keywords. Why so bitter?
January 27th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
[...] in Scripting News at 7:57 am by Dave Winer Scoble: “The big gadget sites, Gizmodo and Engadget, don’t link to [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Michael: cause those words “don’t link off property” still burn.
Of course I don’t have an entitlement to links. But, then, I can point out the non-linking behavior, can’t I?
It seems that bloggers really aren’t looking for interesting information anymore. Just going for the convenient “New York Times” link for the most part. That’s inexcusable now that blog search engines are a lot better than they used to be (which is how I found all the non linkers).
January 27th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I don’t get it. Slashdot, Digg, AnandTech, etc. “don’t link” because they didn’t link to your video? Several of the sites you mentioned do link frequently to bloggers.
There is still the fact that sites link nytimes.com and their ilk are linked to more frequently and more authoritatively than blogs, but I don’t think this is necessarily unreasonable.
January 27th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
As a reader of lots of blogs (and lots of non-blog news websites too), I don’t usually like links to other blogs. Why? Because the vast majority of blog posts are just regurgitating something someone else has written, and the original source was rarely a blog.
All too often I find myself going through a trail of six or seven linked blogs to get back to the original article on the topic. Each blog adds only a tiny bit of new information, if any at all. Many times, it seems that the only reason for a given blog post is to draw traffic to that blogger’s site. They’ll post a blog linking to some other source, and then use their own blog’s link in comments on other sites, on Digg, etc., rather than just linking to the original source. Or someone will link to their friend’s blog, which in turn links to the original source with a sentence or two of commentary. There’s no value added there except for the blogger who is getting more traffic. This has grown incredibly tiresome.
Yes, of course there are exceptions. Some very notable exceptions. But I’m sick of worthless blogged regurgitations of other posts and articles. I tend to not even click on links to blogs unless I’m already familiar with the blogger in question, or the material is extremely compelling. I dislike the policy of not linking to blogs, but I have to admit that it’s refreshing to read sites that just link to the original source of information…
January 27th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Robert,
The best thing to do would be to develop a way of “scoring” a site’s out going link uniqueness (even maybe taking into account the 3rd level of linking). Picking one url and saying that sites don’t link to all blogs based on that one url is misleading. The general trend you note is disturbing, especially if it can be backed up with some empirical evidence.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Damn Scoble’s doing this snap BS too? Can anyone please tell me what the usefulness of being able to see a preview of a link is? Or a study on the subject?
Presumably, it’s to help me decide whether or not I want to visit a website. If I’ve never visited a website, why would I decide not to if the link interests me? And why would I decide not to if someone reputable like Scoble is linking to it?
I honestly don’t get it. As per the subject, I have no problem with them not linking to blogs. Blogs aren’t official sources of information, unless it’s a corporate blog. Or they could link to blogs and say it’s unverified. These gadgets site are fantastic because of their credibility and I wouldn’t want that to change because blogs need a little love.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I recently made a comment about this at Digg, actually - but about their RSS feeds:
“On of the biggest annoyances at Digg is that they don’t include a link to the actual article in their RSS feed (or any links for that matter). The point of RSS is that I can avoid visiting the site just to get my news. It’s even worse on my BlackBerry since I have to load tons of useless data. DiggRiver.com is great but there no F&%*%&# RSS feed there. We all know it’s to keep pageviews up at Digg…not very user friendly. Come to think of it, Digg is probably the only site that doesn’t include links in their RSS feed. Reddit gives you the option of visiting the actual site with the story or visiting reddit for the comments. But the best by far is Techmeme which gives you the description, link to the story, link to the source, and link to techmeme.”
January 27th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
This is ABSURD. We link to blogs every single day of the week. Just because we didn’t link to YOUR particular video you’ve decided that somehow we never link to blogs? This is ridiculously petty and I think you owe us an apology.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I get it now. Basically you spammed the comments of a bunch of blogs and you’re upset that some sites either deleted what you did or didn’t incorporate your link into a post. Really weak.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Ars Technica links :) http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070127-8716.html
January 27th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I blogged about this a couple of days ago. Most MSM sources have always refused to link, but I think there is a growing backlash against links among bloggers which I would guess is partially caused by Techmeme and its clones, due to the hierarchical power structure that the Techmeme algorithm has engendered.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
apart from “not linking” don’t forget about blacklisting of blogs at engadget! In many situations engadget has not linked to super-unique story not published elsewhere - sometimes even waiting 1-2 months until somebody else has this stort. Example: http://mobilitytoday.com is blacklisted by Engadget.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
” This is ridiculously petty and I think you owe us an apology.” — how dare you Peter Rojas say such thing! It is you who is blacklisting other blogs and behaving in petty way!
January 27th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Peter: I wouldn’t need to spam anyone if you all would use Google Blog Search and see that I got an exclusive video that goes far beyond the stuff you linked to last night.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Wow. Engadget’s Peter Rojas calling Robert Scoble a comments spammer!? I don’t think I’ve read anything this arrogant in a long, long time.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Couple of weird things here…
1) Robert is accused of being a comment spammer, even though his blog has no ads.
2) Robert admits to comment spamming because no one will link his stuff.
3) Robert thinks his stuff is the best, and won’t accept anyone else opinion on the matter (even if they’re wrong).
Robert man….you’re way above this, you’ve got the clout and the exposure that you shouldn’t even care who is and isn’t linking you. Maybe we should get Yuvi to run his program on Engadet and Gizmodo to see who all they link to and how often?
January 27th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
[...] Scoble has a nice rant about Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs. [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Once again Scoble jumps to conclusions without bothering to do any research or fact checking. But, hey, as long as your get links, what do facts or truth matter?
January 27th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I link all the time but I do laugh when I have had a article up for 2 or 3 days and it shows up on another site with nearly the same content and the site never links back and gives credit. I shrug it off but I have a list of offenders.
It pisses one off quite a bit when you know you have been first in talking about something but yet again some of the sites may have no idea that anything was written by another blog.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Okay, so Robert and Peter Rojas are both sounding like a couple of little kids. “DID TOO! DID NOT! DID TOO! DID NOTINFINITY!”
lordy. Guys, just a link. Calm down already.
On Mac sites linking more. Well, I don’t know if you can really say “more”, but it’s just the thing you do in the mac web world. You link.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
[...] (such as when he became a political blogger during the Edwards announcements), he just linked to me in a post about how the big gadget sites did not link to his post and video on visiting Intel, even though the Intel 45nm press release is all over the web [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Sorry, Scoble, but no one owes you a link to your video, and to me a post like this feels like you’re trying to bully links out of people.
Admit it: you were angry that you weren’t getting linked to and wanted to lash out.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
It seems to me that Robert is simply trying to stay true to blogging. IMO, all these comments against him are basically saying “we don’t link because blogs are beneath us.”
Bloggers and their readers CREATED the large sites. Peter Rojas’ Engadget wouldn’t even exist without people like Robert who spread the word about such sites. To turn around and then accuse Robert of being a “comment spammer” on his site and others is obscenely arrogant and inexcusable IMO. I think Rojas is the one who owes Robert an apology.
And this rationalization about not linking because “the vast majority of blog posts are just regurgitating something someone else has written, and the original source was rarely a blog” misses the whole point. Blogging is word of mouth advertising to friends and acquaintances. Whining about bloggers “regurgitating” is like whining that your potential customers are passing around your television commercial via You Tube.
I find this “biting the hand that feeds you” attitude truly offensive. That Engadget is already copping an old media elitist attitude is troubling to me. I say hurray for Robert Scoble who remembers where he came from and always acts accordingly!!
January 27th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I’ll reiterate: we link to other blogs ALL the time. To describe as having a policy of not linking to other blogs is absurd and inaccurate. And we don’t only link to other blogs, we also link to newspaper articles, press releases, product pages, forum posts, etc.
What Scoble wrote is patently unfair and completely misrepresents the reality of the situation. This isn’t an us vs. them situation because we have always linked to blogs and will always do so. The fact that I even have to make a point of this is silly, since anyone who reads the site will see that we link to other blogs all the time.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Talking of deleting comments/posts - what’s happening to the Scoble boys?
http://franchisepick.com/?p=154
January 27th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Peter Rojas — this is an us vs. them situation because you made it that way. You could have stayed professional and pointed out Robert’s error without snidely attacking him as a “petty” comments spammer.
If Robert Scoble is a comment spammer then what the heck must you think of a nobody like me who gives input on your site?
Robert apologized for going overboard. I still don’t see an apology from you.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Peter: I’ve updated my blog eight times in response to feedback here. Including two apologies to you.
But, you still haven’t linked to a video that totally is better than the stuff you posted.
I guess you don’t want your readers to really see the best information and you’d rather make a stink in my comments here. Just link, that’s all I ask. And, no, I won’t email you and beg for a link via your “tips” page.
I’ve linked to you hundreds of times — all without getting a single email from you or from your staff.
Not to mention I took a video tour of one of your employees’ homes, which was an awesome video, and you guys didn’t link to that either.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Normally: of course I’m trying to get links. I got a great exclusive. It’s not the first time. And I’ve noticed that fewer and fewer of these sites are organically linking.
One guy said “just email me and I’ll give you a link.” That’s what’s wrong here. Just freaking subscribe to the best bloggers and watch for when they post good shit. That’s what I’m doing on my link blog. It isn’t that hard.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Robert, I write for AutoBlog and AutoBlogGreen which like Engadget are both part of Weblogs Inc. We constantly link to other sites whether they are blogs, magazines newspapers etc. Aside from posts that are original content, anything that we write that originated somewhere else gets linked. The same goes for pretty much all the WIN sites I’ve ever checked out.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
I’ve noticed the “no linking” thing as well. I’ve just launched a new blog in the last week and getting link/referral traffic isn’t as easy as it used to be. The real tragedy is that there’s lots of really good writing and content out there that simply isn’t read for that reason.
The larger new/blog sites like Gizmodo, Engadget, etc engage is a lot of “me too” reporting. There’s a reasonable volume of original work but often they all seem to be reporting the same story at the same time. There have been a couple of times over the last week that where I’ve beaten the larger sites to a story but they’ve all jumped on the story later.
Also, there seems to be less referencing. Someone reads something, posts on it but doesn’t link back to the source. While they may not copy/paste the original text, they do give the impression that the thought is their own original idea and not from somewhere else.
Lastly, my observation is that blogging used to be a more of a community than it is now. There seems, to me at least, to be more competition between bloggers for traffic and as a result there’s less “off property” linking.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
look at scoble the big baby! so you don’t get linked to and you whine about it! what a surprise.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Babysitter: yes, I am a big baby. I helped Engadget make millions by linking to them over and over. Look at the stats. How many links come back?
January 27th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
millions, are you sure? quite impressive that you personally resulted in them making millions of dollars, can you back that up?
January 27th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Babysitter: yes, I “helped” make them millions. Weblogsinc sold for $25 million to AOL. Peter Rojas was made a “millionaire” according to Jason Calacanis.
Note, I didn’t claim I did that alone, but I certainly did help. I watch the traffic flows here and they all go one way.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Engadget will link, but they’ll crop your pictures if you’re using watermarks. They did that to me two weeks ago with my Digital Cable Tuner pics.
News.com used to not link to outside sites, until I bitched about being sick of doing their investigating without credit: http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/archive/2006/10/18/News.com-Needs-To-Start-Citing-Sources.aspx.
And BTW: You guys can get mnad at Scoble… but he kept the post up when he could have just deleted it.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Peter Rojas: you don’t link to blogs all the time, you link to them when you have to. There’s a big difference!
Engadget often rips off other sites without giving them credit. More than one time I have seen them basically rewrite blog posts but attribute the “source” somewhere else. It can be really obvious though when there are details in the Engadget blog post that aren’t in their supposed sources.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Robert,
What are you doing? First you delete a post (I know you can’t talk about it), then you complain that you are not getting linkedto (Which you then retract).
If you keep this up LayZ will be right and the world will be wrong!
Guy the disappointed
January 27th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Guy: sorry for disappointing. I’m not perfect.
January 27th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
About the Mac blogs/sites linking to each other - the Mac community is just that.. a community. At the end of the day Mac users communicate with each other about the platform and have the tendency to share their experiences with hardware and software very openly. Word of mouth on a good software can spread easily and turn small developers into minor stars in the Mac community overnight (like the people behind Ecto and other small apps).
As far as the rest of this conversation is concerned, Engadget just lost a subscriber in me solely due to Peter Rojas’ comment. I understand that they’re a big site and get a lot of traffic and get tons of comments and submissions from bloggers claiming to have exclusives (regardless of whether or not they are legit). I get all of that. What I don’t get is why someone as high up the online media food chain as Peter Rojas would come all the way over here and poo poo on this article. It wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t professional, and it was a huge turn off for me. We know that blogs/sites start to snub the little guys (unless the little guy is truly the first to get the story) when they gain notoriety. It’s the nature of the game. Many people fall to the wayside on the path to legitimacy in journalism. Online journalism is the same, but the people falling to the wayside are the small bloggers and the small outfits that haven’t made it to the big leagues yet.
If Peter wanted to show his side, he could have written an article on Engadget linking to this one and showed examples of how what was reported here was not the case. Furthermore they could’ve detailed how to go about getting your blog or content linked to from Engadget (i.e. what the editors look for in an email submission or in a comment that catches their eye) so that people would have a better idea of how to get link love. Instead he did the equivalent of shouting names on a schoolyard. Pity.
January 27th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Robert — ZDNet blogs to link to others — here’s a post that links to your blog and mine — Andy
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3180
January 27th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Robert,
I’m with you on this one. If you have a great story, then why not try to get it out to sites where readers would be interested?! I appreciate someone taking the time out to do that and I am amazed at the backlash.
I’ve done almost 400 posts but I only thought a dozen or so were worthy of telling other people about. When I did, the backlash was instantaneous. I’ve read that Digg even punishes folks that submit their own links… why? Digg is the perfect place to try to get the word out on your story. It’s no different than putting you car on a busy street with a For Sale sign… I should wait for someone to find it in my garage?
Wikipedia’s new nofollow policy is one of the latest changes that punish the very folks who helped them become as big as they are (I now mark all Wikipedia links with nofollow).
In protest, I don’t visit sites that have closed or no commenting. If their site can’t stand up to criticism, then they should close up. I’ve also removed the nofollow functionality from my comments, which are moderated.
January 27th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
I know that i generally try to track a story back to it’s source and give credit to the site I foung the article on, but often it is impossible as some sites never refer back to the source. Instead I usually go to technorati or google and have to hunt out the original source of the material. If they do link to a site it is buried below the front page and you have to waste time drilling in to find it.
It drives me crazy and is one of the reasons I rarely reference a article to either engadget or gizmodo. Those two sites seem to have nearly the same exact content anyway almost in the same exact timeline its actually pretty funny.
Between rouge sites that flat our rip your content off and the growing number of mainstream blogs that don’t link back is amazing.
I encourage bloggers to take link love away from sites that do not link back.
January 27th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I don’t get those criticizing Rojas on this thread. Scoble was annoyed that his video wasn’t getting linked to and wrote something that was unfair (he has acknowledged as much). It seems perfectly reasonable for Rojas to defend himself.
I think we can all relate to where Scoble is coming from though. Every blogger has the experience of creating a great piece of content that doesn’t go anywhere really or get the links you hoped for. Sort of reassuring that it happens to bigwig like Scoble too.
January 27th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
[...] — kystorms @ 11:24 pm I ran across this blog via Scobleizer’s blog article “Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs - with updates”, its a blog called - The Last Podcast . This blog had an interesting post about time we spend [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
It is time for you to take a break…
Please?
January 27th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Content is King and always will be. Regardless of links. Keep writing good stuff and people will find it eventually. Humans are pretty good at sorting out the wheat from the chaff so have faith. Calm down. Get back to your keyboards.
January 27th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Wow! Just for once, I don’t check Scoble’s blog for a little while, and I miss all the action! Damn it!
Some interesting insights into various people’s personalities in the comments on this post. Can’t wait to see what Loren has to say about all this! LOL!
January 27th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Robert,
It is your imperfection that marked this blog a great read. I have noticed that after you left Microsoft, your post tend to be a little more emotionally charge, not much, just a little.
My concern with the political crap was that you would start into that whole realm of political BS. The quality of your blogs are still great and they do stimulate an exciting debate, however, even your snarky commenter’s are not up to the quality of pre PodTech.
A lot of events are out of your control, and you are obviously struggling with your time commitments, but you put yourselves in this lime-light and a couple of hundred thousand readers want the Scobleizer.
Guy
January 27th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
You can link if you wanta, leave your friends behind, and if your friends don’t link, well they’re no friends of mine. I say, we can link where we want to, A place where they will never find. And we can act like we come from out of this world. Leave the real one far behind. I say, we can link, we can link.
Everything out of control.
I guess I missed that Constitutional provision requiring someone to link, it’s just a godforsaken blog, they can link, or they can not. And you can read them, or not.
January 27th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Hey Christopher,
It’s about time we got decent snark in here.
Guy
January 27th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
So naturally, and I say this with love, the prom queens are fighting AND it is in parallel to the meme that we should ditch terms like ‘social media‘ we can all be JUST LIKE THE MEDIA. Haw.
The tech blogosphere is getting funnier the older it gets. Until the funny runs out and we have that little old man smell in our feeds. Crikey, I need a drink.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
[...] — but for reference, something needs to be said on Engadget’s behalf regarding Scoble’s post earlier today. (If you want the shorter, Calacanis-style take, head [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Hey Robert. If you look at most ever post we write, attributed source. Same with Engadget. So how did you come up with the conclusion that we don’t link to blogs? If it was merely on the basis that we didn’t immediately publish your comment or link to your video, well, I would ask what your motivation was in terms of posting this incorrect information that hurts our reputations a bit.
Anyhow, not a big deal. I’m glad you gave me a call so we could clear things up. Have a good weekend, man.
I’ll be sure to check out the video later, too.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
# 52, I agree, the posts are not only more emotionally charged, but dare I say, not quite as good?
I know you have a new gig at podtech Robert, but the quality of the blog seems to have diminished. I enjoyed reading what you had to say, not reading about how cool the video you are linking to at podtech is.
In some respects, it feels like you have lost your voice in an effort to promote podtech. Which is understandable since that’s how you earn your bread, but something seems to be missing.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
right when i started working for tuaw i got into the extreme habit of using via links, eliot of hack-a-day inspired me to be very adamant about giving credit to tipsters. i still use vias when posting links to netscape today. i can’t stress enough how much big time blogs and social networking sites (like the new netscape) really thrive on people who read interesting rss feeds or just haphazardly trawl the web for newness. those findings mean you should be pimping the place you found the cool freshness.
January 27th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
[...] Scoble is right! Comon Peter lets be honest, you have made it very clear that some sites like mine that you forbid your bloggers to credit their sources and link to.. I have this information directly from one of your ex-bloggers who Jason Calacanis threatened to fire if he did a weekly podcast with me? So why not just be open about your true linking policy and put this thing to rest? [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I love you, man - look at the Scoble mentions and links on my Deal Architect blog
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=scoble&domains=dealarchitect.typepad.com&sitesearch=dealarchitect.typepad.com&btnG=+Google+Search+
On my New Florence blog I am less generous but not zero…
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=scoble&domains=florence20.typepad.com&sitesearch=florence20.typepad.com&btnG=+Google+Search+
since my readership is more on the enterprise side, I do tend to link to a group of bloggers collectively called the Enterprise Irregulars
http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/
and to various industry analysts and various business abd corporate tech focused pubs - boring stuff -)
January 27th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
I run a smaller tech related blog/community site myself. Engadget and Gizmodo sometimes links my articles reviews. Sometimes they link one that was done by another site in the same time frame too. Just because I feel my review was better than the other doesn’t mean that they must link mine instead (or in addition). Would I like them to? Sure! But I am not going to leave comments on their sites linking mine nor am I going to make a big public post about it on my site or my personal blog. If there is something you have a “scoop” on and you get shut out, send a note and ask why. I know that some of the sites are very receptive to these type inquiries.
For any non-ALIST Blogger, getting a link from one of the big guys is nice. The best way (although I am no expert on the subject) to get along with the Engadgets and Gizmodos is to 1)Not send them a tip on EVERYTHING you post. 2)Only submit original content or something exclusive (works most of the time) 3)Actually read their sites. Read before you submit. I have gotten a note from a device manufacturer announcing something only to find that the Big Boys posted the leaked version of the announcement yesterday.
Unlike some big names like Pirillo and Scoble, smaller blogs can’t “sit back” and hope that our original stuff gets picked up by these guys. Even though I believe that all their writers subscribe to all the small guys RSS feeds, I don’t think much of what they post is pulled from that resource. If I had to guess, 80-90% of their linked content comes from submissions. I know that over time, I have started skipping over certain feeds to get to feeds that I know have new, cool stuff to read. In fact I changed my ordering to place feeds I want to read, but don’t want to read now, closer to the bottom.
OK, enough of my babble. In closing, Robert jumped the gun and admitted it. Peter replied to defend his site, he has that right. Maybe he shouldn’t have been as passionate in his response. Brian Lam chimed in as well. It’s all good. Robert’s post could fall under the “write, read, reread in the morning if you still feel it, send it” category.
January 27th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
[...] has a good long cathartic rant on the state of linking in blogs, with multiple updates, apologies and a few random scuffles in the [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 12:12 am
——————-
The non linking policies (even with the NoFollow Option)
could reflect a possible concern about attracting Advertisers with statistics on high pageviews -
There may also be a concern that blogs and other social media are competative - or that they should only link to original content that would not be competative
January 28th, 2007 at 1:10 am
what do you mean that they don’t link to blogs?
why not just get a website then?
January 28th, 2007 at 1:33 am
[...] in a post titled “Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs” wrote that increasingly blogs are avoiding linking to other blogs. it is not hard to see the [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Not only Engadged or Gizmodo but also NYTimes and other magazine does NOT link blogs. Especially in the Italian scenario,Repubblica.it,Corriere.it,don’t link blogs or other website in article: they have almost a directive internal to the editing.
January 28th, 2007 at 2:54 am
[...] Scoble in questo post mi ha fatto riflettere: Scoble infatti ha segnalato grosse novità in casa Intel, con una [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Robert,
I would never expect to see Engadget or Gizmodo linking to a backstage tour of a semi-conductor fab, any more than I’d expect them to link to a tour of San Quentin or Abu Ghraib.
Sure, most of the stuff they write about is built over silicon, but they write about finished goods, not ingredients. I read both of them to tell me about cool, um, well, gadgets and gizmos. Either to learn about stuff I don’t know, or to get their takes on stuff that I know very well.
I get that you have a business to plug. And I get that you’ll use whatever juice you have to plug it. Go for it.
But IMHO, if Ryan and Brian start sending you links just cause you’re you and just cause your videos are great and exclusive, they will begin to lose the sharp editorial focus that makes me fans of what they do.
Your strength is wide focus. That means it makes sense for you to link to pretty much anything. (Heck, you’ve even linked to me, thank you.) Blogs that are built on narrow focus shouldn’t link to stuff just cause it’s good or interesting or important to people they know. They should link to stuff that supports their editorial vision.
January 28th, 2007 at 3:46 am
P.S. I just made that up. I wanted the thrill of going overboard and issuing a correction and retraction. I’m glad you comments are now on both sites with links to your fabulous fab video.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Just for your reference:
Number of times you’ve linked to:
Engadget :34
Gizmodo: 14
Slashdot: 10
Digg: 26
TechMeme:104
This is as of today. And, the Snap preview, in addition to being annoying and useless, broke my scrapper:D
January 28th, 2007 at 4:59 am
Yuvi: what about on my link blog? I linked to Engadget more than that in just CES week there.
January 28th, 2007 at 5:41 am
[...] Related link: related blog post from Robert Scoble. [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Here are the numbers for the linkblog, the feeds you’ve posted from:
Engadget: 160
EngadgetHD: 50
Gizmodo: 65
Digg:216
SlashDot:25
And, if I were to consider only those from Jan,
Engadget: 80
EngadgetHD: 16
Gizmodo:39
Digg: 68
Slashdot:14
And, If I were to consider the links in the posts themselves,
Engadget: 478
EngadgetHD: 64
Gizmodo: 67
Digg: 77
Slashdot: 50
For January?
Engadget: 265
EngadgetHD: 17
Gizmodo: 50
Digg: 19
Slashdot: 21
My Conclusion?
1. You prefer engadget to gizmodo
2. Almost half the links to engadget are during the CES Run, during Jan.
So, yes, you’ve definitely linked a lot to engadget, and gizmodo.
January 28th, 2007 at 6:12 am
I would have drawn some pretty graphs, but that would mean I’d have to make it a post rather than a comment. So, no graphs now. Sorry about that…
January 28th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Hope that helps.
January 28th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Yuvi: I’d love for you to do your analysis of Engadget and Gizmodo’s linking!
January 28th, 2007 at 6:56 am
@Scoble: Thanks! It’s in the cards, and I hope to complete them before I lose the sexiness of being 15(which isn’t long, btw), and I’ll be working on it once I finish wikipedia. Any thoughts on specifics? I am pretty stuck, thinking of how to do the comparison…
And, the vid rocks!
January 28th, 2007 at 6:58 am
I’d love to see the same analysis you did of my blog. That rocked.
January 28th, 2007 at 7:30 am
@Scoble: Anyway, it is going to be the same engine, only slightly modified and enhanced. And, thank you once again:D
January 28th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Engadget had deleted my comment which referred to the same article appearing in Gizmodo. The comment was deleted. I submitted another comment asking why it was deleted. This comment got deleted too.
I understand that it was money for them and they were running a business and all that. I just lost interest after that.
I don’t think I’ve commented there ever since. This was like a year and half ago.
:)
January 28th, 2007 at 8:50 am
[...] course, I teased Robert a bit about his post yesterday, I told him he had so many updates he “should have just published a wiki” so everyone [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Pot calling kettle black
Yesterday, Robert Scobel ranted, Big gadget sites don�t link to blogs and then backed off a bit. But, back when I first wrote Google Reader could be a Digg killer!?!???? and Steve Rubel first picked up on it, Scobel immediately…
January 28th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Yuvi,
I agree with Robert, the analysis that you did on Scoble’s blog covers all the primaries. If you would use that as a standard for blog analysis, you would be able to do comparison across sites.
I would still like to see something on the comments to his posts
Guy
January 28th, 2007 at 9:45 am
[...] it is part of the mainstream media now, or whatever the former Microsoft blogger is getting at in his rant about how Engadget didn’t link to his “scoop” about Intel’s new chip [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 9:59 am
[...] and some don’t know how to see their stats (I bet). Scoble jumped into a minefield with an earlier post that required several corrections and followed it up today with a real rant (”pissing off the [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am
[...] Links are what makes the web world go round but not all links are created equal. Looks like Scoble lashed out against Engadget. It’s understandable that when you have what you feel is good content (like [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 11:32 am
[...] Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs (I went overboard, read updates) « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Bl…: the blogosphere reminds me A LOT of third grade. Could you imagine for a moment if a magazine author or a reporter at a newspaper threw a tantrum in the sandbox because they had a story FIRST god-damnit, and no one cared? Right. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Scoble stirring the pot, eh?
You are kind of wrong on the New York Times not linking to blogs unless you mean inline comments (?), yes/no?
They linked to one of my posts recently from their business section. Admittedly this linking is rare, but they do link to blogs.
And my contact with the writer of the piece told me that’s he’s been working on them to make the links inline instead of in the sidebar for the last year. Progress with MSM takes time.
January 28th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Engadget has linked to my gadget site at:
http://www.svartlinks.com/ , but Gizmodo have never linked. But I think they would if they find something interesting :)
Maybe your video clip isn’t interesting enough? They usually don’t post about video clips.
And personally I don’t want them to do that either. There are too much sites posting links to Youtube video clips already….
January 28th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
[...] Scoble made himself the talk of the blogosphere with his protestations about gadget blogs, notably Gizmodo and Engadget not recognising his scoop [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
[...] friend, Robert Scoble, has two great rants up about blogging & linking: Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs followed by Pissing off the [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
I think all news sites on the net should be featuring trackbacks by now, telling who’s linking to who. Isn’t that what Web 2.0 is all about? And if I re-report a story, I ALWAYS put the series of people who reported it first (my sources).
January 28th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
[...] Scoble has raised a ruckus in a corner of the blogosphere this weekend (and here and here) by complaining about the lack of “credit links” among [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
[...] http://robertscobleizer.com/2007/01/27/big-gadget-sites-dont-link-to-blogs/ [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
[...] who’s the biggest linking whore of them all? Robert Scoble is not it. Posted by Uncle Su Filed in [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
[...] the weekend Robert Scoble started a big bushfire, claiming that big blogs don’t link to other blogs. He’s right, but unfortunately for [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[...] that he had an video interview and when the gadget blogs didn’t really pay any attention, Scoble got pissed. He ranted, which I would have done too, but when you are essentially blogger #1, you really have [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
[...] Robert Scoble manages to piss off quite a few people yesterday with his post about big blogs not linking to people, who writes a [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
We have a blog that is in the same space as a major Weblogs, Inc., blog. We often used to break stories and do not get linked to. The way we have handled it is:
(1) Send friendly e-mail announcements of major stories to go up in the next hour or so directly to one of the Weblogs, Inc., bloggers. This functions as a sort of “we’re watching you” notice, without being obnoxious or burning our bridges. If that blogger ever screws us, we switch our announcements to another one.
(2) Make sure we are the source to go to — our coverage needs to have some exclusive aspect to it, or we really can’t blame anyone for not linking to us. This usually involves turning off the computer and getting on the telephone, something bloggers seem to have forgotten how to do.
Still, their tiny “Link” at the bottom doesn’t bring in a lot of traffic, and they don’t seem to like linking from inside the story, unless it’s to AOL.
January 28th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Rock and Roll…the back an forth, he said - he said, nature of this post is the most entertaining thing I have seen on a blog in a long time. By the time I reached comment #75 I no longer understood the issue at hand, nor do I even care. I just think it is cool that A-List bloggers can have such a nasty pulbic exchange (aka pissing match). If this was Hollywood they would drag Shannon Daugherty out to throw a drink in someone’s face.
I think you will set a record for number of comments in a week.
January 28th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
[...] were wrong at Microsoft even challenging MS employees and praising other companies. Robert posted a story this weekend about larger blogs not linking to anyone, but in reality the post was about why these [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
[...] do podcasts and video blogs matter? Jump to Comments Scoble pissed off the blogosphere yesterday saying that Engadget does not link to others. I read some [...]
January 28th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
[...] Robert Scoble squaring off against big gadget sites like Endgadget and Gizmodo whom he says don’t link to blogs (though in updates he says he went [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 7:08 am
[...] instead of reading about Scoble crying or the end of the blogosphere, the interesting question to think about (after what I would do with [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 9:58 am
[...] quite a lot in the past year, but this one in particular caught my eye last weekend. I ran across this post on Robert Scoble’s blog Scobleizer. In this post Scoble rants about how upset he is at the [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
[...] the subject It all began to sound like a conspiracy theory with numerous comments on Roberts post “big gadget sites don’t link to blogs”. Here’s most of the information I am sure (in fact I am positive) that Scoble would not have [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
[...] Scoble started off a bit of a debate online when he lashed out at some prominent blogs for not linking to his content, and to other bloggers on the [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
[...] posts on how no big blogs link [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
[...] Robert Scoble, the ex-Microsoftie blogger who blogs at Scobleizer pissed off his fellow bloggers by accusing them of not linking often to his blogs and videos [he has since admitted to going overboard but is still cranky]. He particularly named [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
[...] So Robert Scoble got upset the other day about people linking to major media sites instead of other blogs. [...]
January 29th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Robert,
Come in off the ledge on this one. Let these comments trickle off on this one. Only thse who risk going too far will know how far one can go. You blew this one. You apologized. Get on to a new subject.
January 29th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Wow. You win the Biggest Douche of the Week award, and it’s still Monday.
January 29th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
matto: I won that award on Saturday. So, I guess I’m winning it two weeks in a row! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
January 30th, 2007 at 9:29 am
[...] me to be an enthusiastic and fairly genuine chap. But I couldn’t help rolling my eyes when he stomped his feet about people not linking to his reports on Intel’s new chip manufacturing stuff. He [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 11:38 am
[...] I understand Scoble being astounded that fewer people were interested in linking to his video documenting IBM’s breakthrough [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
[...] This time it’s about the Big Boys in the tech blogosphere and the perception that they don’t link out to other, smaller sites. Whether or not Robert is right - and his comments are full of vitriol in both directions - [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
[...] the last couple of days he seems to of lost his fricken mind. He started this weekend by posting a story accusing other large blogs like Engadget of not linking to him which I already commented on. He [...]
January 31st, 2007 at 12:15 pm
You got paid to shoot the video for Intel did you not?
February 1st, 2007 at 7:05 am
[...] Robert Scoble squaring off against big gadget sites like Engadget and Gizmodo whom he says don’t link to blogs (though in updates he says he went [...]
February 1st, 2007 at 8:22 am
I’ve been thinking about linking in blogs a little bit lately (namely putting links on my own blog) as well and am starting to wonder if, at present, I’ve been slacking in this department purely due to a LACK OF TIME on my part . . .
February 1st, 2007 at 10:11 pm
[...] all this hoopla about not linking to bloggers. How about linking to the dammed [...]
February 4th, 2007 at 7:47 am
[...] to throw in the fact that Jason doesn’t own Weblogs, Inc. anymore and that he had no place in Robert’s tirade. I also pointed out that Robert had a point considering Engadget has been found to have less than [...]
February 5th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
LOL. Blogs are a medium. Meaning they are neither rare nor well done. I don’t blame sites for not linking to blogs - if I’m Joe Reader, I’m there to absorb good quality content, not the verbal diarreah that pervades almost ever corner of the “blogsphere”.
lol….blogsphere.
February 9th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
[...] blogger Robert Scoble decided to take on the entire blogosphere and walked away with a black [...]
February 11th, 2007 at 10:32 am
[...] aanleiding was wellicht Scoble’s kleine temper tantrum toen hij de halve blogosfeer verweet niet te linken naar een filmpje dat hij gemaakt had van de CEO van Intel, waarin de één of andere [...]
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
[...] created an avalanche when he lashed out against big gadget sites (like Engadget and Gizmodo) for not linking to other blogs. The response was overwhelming. Michael Arrington of Techcrunch wrote a sympathetic post entitled, [...]
March 4th, 2007 at 2:40 am
[...] IT. Tak sedikit pula praktisi IT yang tersinggung dengan opini di postingannya misalnya hanya gara2 masalah sepele mempermasalahkan ada atau tidak link ke [...]
March 4th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
[...] month or so ago, the famous Robert Scoble was crying about the fact that some other nerd site did not link to him . It turns out that his company, Podtech , does not play by the rules he cries [...]
March 18th, 2007 at 2:55 am
[...] Look, some of the top “A-listers” that everyone reads are the four writers at Boing Boing. They have their own lives, write about anything they want, and when they cover tech it’s on their own terms. And they get over ten times the traffic that media critic and supposed A-list blogger Jeff Jarvis gets. They also dwarf former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, who now only gets attention when he complains about not getting attention. [...]
April 25th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
[...] created an avalanche when he lashed out against big gadget sites (like Engadget and Gizmodo) for not linking to other blogs. The response was overwhelming. Michael Arrington of Techcrunch wrote a sympathetic post entitled, [...]
February 17th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Amber said. Jenny obeyed and added another finger, pinching her sister’s cunt.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:53 am
[...] it’s now all about Robert. When someone links to the New York Times instead of him, it’s a direct personal [...]