The Tin Foil Hat

Don't you just love paranoia?

I've been having one of those mornings. I read a blog post from Seth Godin about making your numbers, or about neglecting your real goals and focusing on trying to cheat some random metric instead. It's a good post, you should check it out.

My TFH moment came towards the end, when I read this:-

Saw a blog post today in which the author mentioned the name of ten or fifteen bloggers, ostensibly in context, with links to each, all in an attempt to game the system. But what's his real goal? When increasing the metric doesn't increase the benefit, then you have the wrong metric.

Now, I don't really believe it was directed at me, but that's exactly what I do with the Micro ISV Digest posts, so I did take some time to stop and think. What is the goal of those posts? Is there something subversive going on here?

Primarily, I'm just trying to provide a useful summary of anything that's likely to be of interest to our Micro ISV niche, along with some cool relevant links if I can find any. It helps me keep track of what's happening in and around the community, and there are a lot of links I'd otherwise end up dedicating entire blog posts to. I spend a lot of time reading, researching, and putting the posts together, but I haven't had to pay attention to anything I wasn't already interested in following.

I have seen an increase in traffic to my blog in the 3 months since I started posting the digests, but that seems to be because those posts are popular. I'm not under any illusion that I'm increasing my customer base with this traffic, or that this metric tallys with any business goals. In fact, many of the digest posts have included links to competitors. What can I say: basically, it makes me feels really good to put something together that is well read and useful. I also like being able to draw attention to all those Micro ISVs who have just announced their products and who might really benefit from some extra traffic or feedback.

Which brings me nicely to the other possibility, am I trying to game the system? Unless I've completely misunderstood something, the links will benefit the recipient, not me, and my fairly static PageRank seems to confirm that. Trackbacks might have given me some residual benefit from those links, but I'm using Blogger here, so there are no trackbacks. While I have received some generous links in return from bloggers I've linked to, and I really appreciate every one, I like to think they've linked back because they liked the posts, not out of some sense of obligation.

I will be keeping the digest posts coming, this little rant was just about exploring my own motivation, and making sure I'm confident that what I do is right and acceptable. If you made it this far, you might also like to read KC's musings yesterday on how fine the line between spamming and providing a valuable service can be... He thinks it's all about intent, and I'm inclined to agree.

So, thanks to Seth for making me think, and thank you for reading. Keep watching the skies ;).

Tags: blogging paranoid rants