2009-11-17 09:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineWow, there's a lot of chatter on this subject going around the 'tubes today:
Okay, Dilbert's daily dose of snark and cynicism is expected. But five minutes later, Dave Tate fired this link across his Twitter feed.
Well, hello there.
"Me-too content gets ignored. Scraped and remixed junk won’t cut it. There’s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there’s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read."
When I was let go from Massively (mid-2008) and Big Download (Sept '09), it was a conflation of my writing stuff that didn't catch a lot of eyeballs, since it was somewhat esoteric, maybe a bit opinionated, and not necessarily aimed at the wider audience each of these sites cater to. Which is fine; if I'm not making the company any (or enough) money as a contributor, it makes sense. As I said then, "The fact that I'd write a finely-crafted 900 word article, just to see it bumped for a 200 word C&P from some press release didn't sit well."
However, I did not, have not, and will not turn any of my writing outlets into glorified, non-mechanical RSS aggregation services.
I admit to poring over traffic reports for my various web presences, both because I think it's fascinating, and because I'm ego-curious. Yeah, pride's one of the seven deadlies. I have pride in craftsmanship. I have pride in achievement. I honestly think something interesting falls out of my head every so often.
Okay, Dilbert's daily dose of snark and cynicism is expected. But five minutes later, Dave Tate fired this link across his Twitter feed.
Well, hello there.
"Me-too content gets ignored. Scraped and remixed junk won’t cut it. There’s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there’s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read."
When I was let go from Massively (mid-2008) and Big Download (Sept '09), it was a conflation of my writing stuff that didn't catch a lot of eyeballs, since it was somewhat esoteric, maybe a bit opinionated, and not necessarily aimed at the wider audience each of these sites cater to. Which is fine; if I'm not making the company any (or enough) money as a contributor, it makes sense. As I said then, "The fact that I'd write a finely-crafted 900 word article, just to see it bumped for a 200 word C&P from some press release didn't sit well."
However, I did not, have not, and will not turn any of my writing outlets into glorified, non-mechanical RSS aggregation services.
I admit to poring over traffic reports for my various web presences, both because I think it's fascinating, and because I'm ego-curious. Yeah, pride's one of the seven deadlies. I have pride in craftsmanship. I have pride in achievement. I honestly think something interesting falls out of my head every so often.
