Ok, so I’m old. Curmudgeonly. Fixed in my ways. And feeling older every time I venture out of my comfort zone and attempt to embrace new ideals – I’m sure every generation feels this, but stuff it – the web used to be for geeks, and now look at it…
I don’t blog as much as I used to, but that’s for a hugely complex number of reasons, not least of which is that there is so much out there to _do_ it’s hard to stop learning and tell others – plus my day job is now decidedly non-commercial when compared to my previous companies, and so a lot of what I do, investigate or experiment with day-to-day is no longer anything I can share publicly. Which is great for job satisfaction, but lousy for this website.
So todays’ grump was triggered by a tweet. Just one lousy tweet, and it wasn’t even rude – it also comes from a firm I have a great business relationship with and am happy to promote as solid, good value and brilliantly supportive web and domain name company:
How to generate traffic to your #blog on a shoe-string budget: http://vidaho.st/3t
From: https://twitter.com/vidahost/status/481010191270686720
I mean, W the actual F ? Since when was the single aim of a blog to generate traffic ? What happened to the desire to just put stuff out there for folks that want to read or learn ? When did “speaking your mind” turn into “promoting your brand” ? What bunch of vain, self-important, trivialising, short-sighted attention seeking focus deprived idiots decide that writing a blog entry to encourage money to be paid to third parties who second guess secret and dynamically changing machine learning algorithms ?
Oh wait: that means I read their site. Damnit.
Enough with this “content generation” – stop being pawns of marketers and WRITE STUFF YOU CARE ABOUT.
Humph.
I’m off to find a rocking chair and my slippers, safe in the knowledge that no-one will be happy about paying adword fees to read my drivel.
Claiming words back for the geeks – even if no-one is listening. That’s satisfying.
Crispin
Some people are listening. And share your views 😀
ian
Listening ? Uh oh… That means I might have to start making sense !
The pressure !
Crispin
er no. I wouldn’t worry. I live on multiple planes of nonsense, and am much happier there.
You when it does, no? But it do!