Backlinks, backlinks, everywhere

Late last year, Forbes Mike Schaffner asked "Are spam, hackers, privacy concerns and commercialization killing social media?".

I certainly hope so. The death of social media cannot happen too quickly for me

No, really, I'm not joking. I like the original "social" aspect. I keep up with family and close friends through Facebook and Twitter and even follow a few other people who talk about subjects I am interested in. But as that Forbes article opined, it's all gone too far. There is too much spam, too much shameless self promotion, just too much junk!

I think I first became annoyed with "social media" in 2003. In a post entitled "Is Slashdot worth reading?", I expressed a dissatisfaction that had been growing for several years.

The problem, I think, is that the lunatics are running the asylum. Apparently what gets to the front page is still filtered by intelligent people, but because the volume of comments has become so large, the rating and filtering of those has been turned over to the masses: everyone who logs in gets to moderate a few posts. Slashdot tries to overcome the rule of the great unwashed by also doing meta-moderation: people also pass judgement on the quality of other moderators judgements; but it isn't enough. With rare exceptions (some topics do attract intelligent commentary more than others) there's too much junk here and not enough substance.

It reminds me of a summer barbecue full of heavy drinkers: a lot of noise, a lot of talking, but little intelligence. Maybe fun once in a great while, probably a blast if you are one of the alcoholics in training, but not something I want to do more than once every few years.

But that's not Social Media

You might not think of Slashdot as social media. Indeed, at "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship", there is a history of social media beginning with Six Degrees which does not even mention Slashdot as a social media site. You'll see why I brought it up soon enough, though.

What is Social Media?

At the link I just referenced above, they define social media as follows

We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.

But that is not what social media really is, is it? Oh, sure, that is part of it. But it is really about promotion, not connections. That's what Slashdot became about and it is what every social media site is mostly about today. Promotion. Either ego promotion or web page promotion.

The Elephant

That is the very big elephant in the room that nobody ever mentions. Everybody is posting social media links. Twitter, Facebook, here, there, everywhere, promote, promote, backlink, backlink.

So what's wrong with that? Maybe nothing. If you aren't trading links with other people, you aren't doing anything wrong, right?

Well, maybe. HubPages just published their Guide to Backlinking in the Hub Pages Learning Center. That rather strongly suggests that excessive promotion is something you should avoid, noting:

Some people, however, take this link posting and sharing too far. Instead of occasionally sharing relevant links, they always share all links, be they relevant or not. This is, for lack of a better way to put it, lame and annoying. There is an easy way to tell whether you’re sharing too many links: just ask yourself: “Am I doing this for backlinks?” If you are, STOP.

I have many times pointed out Google's advice on creating links, which includes this simple sentence:

Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?

And yet, the newly minted web page author is bombarded with contrary counsel.

So called SEO "experts" tell them to create accounts wherever they can and to post their links far and wide. If I or someone like me suggests that such activity might be a tad dishonest ( or extremely dishonest; see my Link Wheel Deception article ), we are labeled as unrealistic fools and accused of giving bad advice!

I have to say that I do not have a great deal of respect for SEO as it is commonly practiced. or for the use of social media as a promotion tool.  I am in agreement with that Learning Center article mentioned above: a little promotion is fine, but too much is not.  It's spam, and there is no nicer way to say it.

So, here we are. Are you new to the web and frustrated that you are not rich yet, that you have not been able to grab the brass ring of Internet publishing? Have you been reading about creating your own backlinks (voting for yourself) at other sites and believing that there really is no correllation between good writing and earning money, that you must promote, promote, promote?

I am unlikely to change your mind, am I? After all, I'm relatively new to all this; I've only been on the Web for two decades. Google can't sway you either and that Learning Center article is not going to convince you. You are going to listen to the "experts" and post spam social media links wherever you can.

Oh, well. I keep trying. I have told you how to ask for real backlinks and explained that real cream rises by itself. But it's so much easier to make your own links, isn't it? And as long as Google is foolish enough to give you at least a little link juice from that, you are going to keep doing it, right?

Ayup. I'm sure you will.