How Often can you Read the Same News, but Different?

Posted by Hans de Ruiter

Yesterday, I commented on how a blog's visibility in Technorati could be increased simply by linking to other blogs. Well, looking at Technorati's number one ranked blog, the Huffington Post, it appears that this game is being played by many; maybe too many. Take a look at the Huffington Post's listing on Technorati, it's post reactions list is filled with links to Huffington Post (over 362,000, in fact) ranging from relevant, to weak. For example, what exactly does "Unearthed: News of the Week the Mainstream Media Forgot to Report" by Robert F Kennedy Jr and Brendan DeMelle have to do with a site that sells Male enhancement drugs? Nothing really. There is not even any original content there, just a direct link to the news article on Huffington Post. This is just a blatant attempt to increase incoming links and ratings. 

There are many others that are referencing the Huffington Post legitimately, as they are discussing the same events. However, I do wonder how many times one can read the same news, that has simply been rehashed in a slightly different form. How many of the other sites actually add something new instead of paraphrasing the original? There are too many other sites for me to even attempt to figure this out. What I do know, is that opinions from random individuals who were not there when the news in question occurred, are not interesting to me. 

What about technology blogs? After all, this is an area in which I personally have more interest. The number two ranked blog is Gizmodo. Here too, we see the same game being played. Have a look at this article on Gizmodo; now look at this post, the title is identical; now look at this blog post which links to the other blog post, which links to the Gizmodo article, all with the same title. What is the longest chain of identically titled blog posts on the internet? That would be an interesting fact to know. Admittedly, this is a more extreme example, and there is a place for bloggers offering their opinions on articles that they have read. However, it does seem that the amount of original content may be significantly less than the number of blog-posts swirling around on the internet.

Admittedly, in writing this post, I have unwittingly added this blog to the Huffington Post and Gizmodo's blog reactions list. Ah well, at least this post is original, and the links are relevant. More importantly, this blog will get more views. <smirk>

Comments (0) | 12 July 2008