Why I do daily Diigo link posts and think it’s okay
Aidan Henry threw down the gauntlet for me to explain why I do (semi)daily link posts from Diigo on my blogs:
Obviously, many will disagree with my view as auto-posting is quite widespread within the blogosphere. In any case, whenever I come across a link post in my RSS reader, 99% of the time I’ll just skip over it. Blog posts are meant to spur discussions and create conversations. A list of links isn’t very interesting or engaging. Instead of a blog post, a quick Tweet may be a better way to share links and generate reader engagement.—Del.icio.us Link Posts
The answer is pretty simple: I don’t have time to blog about all the great stuff I find and I want to share it with you.
Let me explain how I use Diigo and that should help here.
There are two levels of bookmarks I set here. One level are the ones that I share to the Maple Leaf 2.0 group, those are published as an RSS feed on the sidebar.
The next level is those I want to publish in the link blog.
Both groups I want to share with you. Maybe it’s a great thought-provoking post, or a friend, or just interesting. The ones that I post daily as a post, are ones important enough that if I had time I would blog them, but just won’t be able to so I’d still like the link love and readers to be shared.
I’m trying to keep the links in the daily post to be really good, and not even do it everyday, but that’s why I do it.
Work for you?
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Daily Links, Social Media, Web Services
4 opinions for Why I do daily Diigo link posts and think it’s okay
Aidan Henry
May 23, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Works for me Tris. Thanks for your good spirits :)
Cheers,
Aidan
Mack D. Male
May 23, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Makes sense to me! I like seeing what you come across.
Simon Koldyk
May 23, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Guess I’ll be the odd one out, I agree with Aidan and just skip over any posts that are purely just links.
Yule Heibel
May 23, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I think Diigo link posting is often a special case, and different from other bookmarking services that let you feed your links to your blog, in part because (a) Diigo gives you a very generous “commentary” window for describing the link/ article, and (b), when the link to the article is then posted to your blog, Diigo also includes a link right next to the article called “Annotated.” Click on the title link, and you’re taken to the article itself, just like in Delicious. But click on the “annotated” link and you’re taken to the version that shows all the annotations (highlighting and notes or stickies) made by (in this case) the blogger posting the Diigo link.
IOW, Diigo adds so much value that posting links becomes more than just …well, posting links.
Here’s how I handle my Daily Diigo links to my blog. If I come across something that I’m just mildly interested in or that holds merely superficial interest to what my blog is mainly about, I don’t make it a “public” bookmark, which means you never see it in my Diigo page, and it doesn’t get sent to my blog, either. But if it’s an article about something that grabs me — and especially if it relates to something I just read somewhere else — I use the commentary/description window to synthesize the ideas I’m having about that article. Same thing in the actual highlights and stickies I insert in the article.
Then it goes to my blog. It’s more than just another Delicious type RSS feed at that point. I know not everyone uses it that way, but for me, that’s the real value in Diigo Dailies to blog function. You can watch how I pull research/ ideas/ whatever together, and how I synthesize the stuff I’m reading.
And even if that doesn’t yank your chain, it does mine! :-) And it really helps me remember what grabbed my interest in the first place.
Now, aside from how I’m using Diigo, even if someone doesn’t “add value” in that way I still enjoy glancing at what other people whose blogs I respect find valuable enough to bookmark. For example, I love Regine Debatty’s ‘We make money not art’ blog, which is full of really weird shit about the latest developments in art and virtual stuff. On a regular basis, she posts her Delicious links — just the links, m’am. No commentary, no annotations. But what links!
Further — I just have to toot Diigo’s horn here, because it is such a great service — I also have the option of using my Diigo toolbar to send an article directly to my blog, without bookmarking it. Doing that opens a separate editing tab where I can write my little blog post about it, add a category, and send it off.
Or I can use the Diigo toolbar to send a link to Twitter (or Facebook). Or use it just to make a note to myself, or to send a note about the article (with annotations & all links) to friends via email.
But that’s a bit off-topic in terms of Aidan’s initial question around whether just posting links holds any value in blogging. I think if that’s *all* someone does, it’s kinda boring — they could just tell me to subscribe to their Delicious page or something, right? But if someone is posting really thoughtful essays, and several times a week also posts their links, that’s fine IMO. And if they’re using Diigo to add value to those links — well, then from my perspective that’s great.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: