I’ve thought a lot about this over the last few days.
Currently, everything on 512 Pixels would be considered a “post” on a DF-style blog. That is, that the headline goes to the permalink for the post itself, not to the linked content.
The most common criticism of this set up is that it seems like I’m double-dipping for page views. (Granted, I’ve gotten a whole two emails about this in 4 years.)
I don’t see this as a viable argument. If you want to go straight to another website that I’ve linked to, doing so is as simple as clicking the link in your RSS reader of choice. No one ever has to view my actual site to get to content I’m linking to. Since I offer all of my content as full-length posts in RSS, no one is getting left out.
As far as Twitter goes, Daring Fireball, The Brooks Review and more auto-tweet links to their site, meaning readers see their site first, then have to click through to the linked site. This is no different than how the 512 Pixels Twitter account works.
To make sure it is easy as possible to pass traffic to the people I’m linking to, my “linked list items” usually follow this pattern:
- Link to source
- Block quote
- My commentary
There’s nothing in here that’s any different than how other people do it, except that the headline for the piece links to itself.
At this point, I am not changing the way the site works. I understand that a majority of people who responded to my survey would like me too, but I don’t think I’m doing anything convoluted by writing the way I do.
Don’t forget, the majority of sites on the Internet work like 512 Pixels. DF-style blogs are only found in our corner of the Internet, but the style just doesn’t feel right for me to implement.