Of blogs and blogging

Over the last couple of days, I’ve had the opportunity to re-visit LL’s recent call to bloggers through commenting on a couple of fellow blogger’s posts on the subject – namely Mariis’ Explorations and Nalates Urriah. Mariis and I are pretty much on the same page on things – as our exchange demonstrates; Nalates admits herself perplexed as to the derisive reaction of some bloggers (and I count myself among them), and I’ve attempted to provide explanation which actually formed the basis of what I’m about to say here.

These exchanges have been part of a wider cogitation on the matter, and as such, I’d like to put a further alternative idea to Linden Lab on the matter of working with the blogging community. I’ll leave it to TPTB at LL (assuming they’re still reading this blog!) to decide on the usefulness / applicability of the idea. In putting it forward, I’ll also state that I’ve little doubt the broad thrust of what I’m outlining here may well have been stated elsewhere and well ahead of me – so I apologise to those that have raised it first if I’m repeating things.

The idea is this: rather than seek to solicit blog posts on an exclusive basis, LL should perhaps consider looking to reprint suitable blog articles within their own web space. This may well be slightly more labour-intensive for them (although given by their own admission they do have staff routinely perusing and reading blogs, so the overhead shouldn’t be that big an issue) – but there would be significant benefits, in particular:

• They show that they are willing to work on a more collaborative basis with the community
• They are free to cherry-pick that articles they wish to reproduce in their pages without let or hindrance, and free from controversial “public” submission guidelines
• The official blogs stand to get fresh content
• They don’t directly impact on indvidual bloggers’ freedom to cover SL or their ability to enjoy the drect benefit of having their own words appearing on their own pages.

Such an approach stands to generate a lot of goodwill from the blogging community. For a start, who would not feel somewhat flattered upon the receipt of an e-mail from LL requesting permission to reprint an article that has taken time and effort to put together? The e-mail needn’t be too hard to put together either; I’d suggest something like: “Dear X, we recently read your blog article on Y and found it to be both informative and entertaining. We would like to reproduce it in under the Guest Blogger section of our website. You will of course receive full credit for the work, together with a link to your own website. If you are happy for us to include your article in our pages, please reply to this e-mail within Z days, together with a 3-sentence biography relating to yourself. We will, of course, inform you when we do reprint the article”. Or words to that effect. I think it fair to say that such an e-mail would give a person quite a feeling of recognition / involvement.

It would also give LL the freedom to reproduce articles they like and which fit their overall requirements. Any concerns relating to wording, etc., could be taken care of through the use of a disclaimer printed ahead of the article, vis: “The views and opinions in the following piece are those of the named author. They do not represent the views or opinion of Linden Research Inc., its employees or agents.”  (or again, something similar). Granted, it’s not 100% watertight, but given LL are retaining a free hand in selecting the items they might wish to reproduce, one suspects contentious or deliberately controversial articles are not going to be among their likely candidates for reprinting.

And on the matter of exclusivity itself: would LL really be losing out to any great degree in foregoing the requirement? I actually don’t think so. I rather suspect (and with respect to all) that, with the exception of a handful of high-profile blogs, LL has a much broader potential readership in the form of the entire SL community bouncing in and out of their website via individual Dashboards than the majority of bloggers enjoy on an individual basis. As such, LL aren’t likely to miss out that much because some have read the article ahead of it appearing in the official website.

All-in-all, and subject to my not having missed something in the equation, this would seem to be a win / win situation for all concerned. Linden Lab get to freshen-up their own blogs and are seen to be positively connecting with the community; bloggers get to keep on doing what they do best without diverting their attention away from directly nurturing their own blogs, whilst also having the freedom to turn out posts that might well be suited to being picked-up by the Lab.