One of my pet peeves, and I believe it's other people's pet peeve as well, is when someone posts a link to content...
One of my pet peeves, and I believe it's other people's pet peeve as well, is when someone posts a link to content they want to share, but instead of linking to that content, their link takes you to an intermediary site.
For example, check out this YouTube video but the link they're sharing is to their blog where they embedded the video, or to their other social media site where they already shared the video.
This annoys me when individuals do it and it annoys me when companies do it (I'm looking at you The Huffington Post and Examiner.com) as a manner of bumping their site clicks, "likes" or plus-1s.
Heinz Seijas, recently posted such a post to his stream. With barely more than a link, he asks us to watch a YouTube video linked to through a message board. There's no discussion on the board, just a link to YouTube.
When I brought up my distaste for such maneuvers he (1) told me it was no big deal then (2) I could uncircle him, if I saw fit. So, I took him up on his advice and uncircle him.
As I'm uncircling him I notice his "works at" is the intermediary website he originally shared. Now I'm thinking he either owns the site or manages it and is using G+, and quite possibly other social media sites, to bump numbers for advertising sales statistics.
I believe content is king. Create content people want to see and those people will find you. There's no need to trick people into boosting your numbers. In my opinion this is the same as buying followers to make yourself look more important than you are. For me, this is an unethical practice.
What do you think?
https://plus.google.com/+HeinzSeijas/posts/cMjPrH4p8nd
For example, check out this YouTube video but the link they're sharing is to their blog where they embedded the video, or to their other social media site where they already shared the video.
This annoys me when individuals do it and it annoys me when companies do it (I'm looking at you The Huffington Post and Examiner.com) as a manner of bumping their site clicks, "likes" or plus-1s.
Heinz Seijas, recently posted such a post to his stream. With barely more than a link, he asks us to watch a YouTube video linked to through a message board. There's no discussion on the board, just a link to YouTube.
When I brought up my distaste for such maneuvers he (1) told me it was no big deal then (2) I could uncircle him, if I saw fit. So, I took him up on his advice and uncircle him.
As I'm uncircling him I notice his "works at" is the intermediary website he originally shared. Now I'm thinking he either owns the site or manages it and is using G+, and quite possibly other social media sites, to bump numbers for advertising sales statistics.
I believe content is king. Create content people want to see and those people will find you. There's no need to trick people into boosting your numbers. In my opinion this is the same as buying followers to make yourself look more important than you are. For me, this is an unethical practice.
What do you think?
https://plus.google.com/+HeinzSeijas/posts/cMjPrH4p8nd
Comments
He'd have been better off just fessing up that he's a scumbag on the level of an SEO.
I can't stand when people link to another site that has nothing to do with them, like linking to someone elses tweet that has a link to a video.
http://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-auto-publish-blog-post-to-google-plus-page.html
Now, it would have been one thing if there had been a discussion already happening on his site, but there was nothing. Nada. Just a link to a post to a YT video.
The above is just one example. I've also seen where people on Google+ (because I spend so much more time here) will post "hey, check this out" and link to a tweet they made. That tweet then has a bit.ly or ow.ly type link to their FB page or blog where the real content is located.
I don't know... like I said, it's just a pet peeve of mine.