The preparations for the launch have been really revealing in the way that bloggers have responded. Some have been enthusiastic, some have had valid questions and concerns and some have been…..well down right rude.
One of the major challenges that we’ve faced is people suggesting that we were “stealing” their content. Which is kind of understandable given that there are people out there that do that and there are people out there who will pass of other people’s blog content off as their own. But there are a number of factors that make Bbb different.
If you join the community we will link your site via your RSS feed. This means that the content remains on YOUR blog. If people want to read the post they need to do so on YOUR blog and if they want to comment, the only place they can do so is on YOUR blog.
We’re not trying to take visitors or content away from anyone’s site…quite the opposite, we are trying to help readers find out and enjoy other blogs, to help people grow their readership. There are many different ways that we could have set the site up, the way we have chosen to doesn’t maximise the SEO potential but it does retain the independence and the ownership of the content by bloggers. And being bloggers, that was the most important thing to us.
If we were to link to a site via a blog roll, we wouldn’t be considered to be stealing content, in fact most people would normally thank you. Bbb is essentially a big blog roll, set up and categorised to help people to find your site and your content.
Does that make us the pirates of the high blog seas? We don’t think so, but then again I guess we wouldn’t would we?