Should Bloggers Be Killing the Competition?
This week has brought about a bit of a debacle in the blogging world. Posterous went a little on the offensive and insinuated that their competition, Tumblr was a little juvenile as a platform. In their own words…
Tumblr is a pretty cool service. They offer easy set up, loads of funky themes and super-simple reblogging. But blogging on Tumblr is sort of like being in high school. But you know deep-down that you can’t be in high school forever. Eventually, you have to move on…
Face it. You need to leave Tumblr behind and graduate to Posterous.
Bold. Perhaps too bold, in fact, as multiple news outlets not only raising questions but at times outright refuting Posterous’ claims.
Obviously, we’re talking in the realm of startups and apps and not just blogging, but these startup apps are changing the blogging industry, so for me it prompts some deeper thinking about competition in the blogging world.
Here are some questions, you give me answers if you dare…
- Should bloggers see others in their niche as competition?
- If so, are they “friendly” competition?
- How aggressive should bloggers be to claim their turf?
- How do you size up Posterous’ words? Ambitious or slanderous?
- What advice would you give on the subject?
So… shoot!
In addition to serving as Editor of Fuel Your Blogging, Brandon is also a Pastor at Saddleback Church and Online Community Coordinator for Pastors.com. He’s also a web designer, blogger, and church communications consultant. Catch him on his own blog or on Twitter.
My fellow bloggers are my coworkers, or that’s how I choose to see it.
I gain readers because of others in my niche rather than losing them. People like to read a variety of sources across the same topic of interest, so when we promote each other, we all win.
Jean, that’s the nature of the web – excellent point. Nobody reads just one blog… do they?
Jean Sarauer, I agree that fellow bloggers are important. We learn from the negative responses and grow as well as the positive ones. If we utilize the feedback to our advantage instead of allowing it to fuel our rage to our hurt we end up better off.
I’d be inclined to say ‘keep it respectful and friendly’. For an example of friendly, consider the Posterous Autopost to Tumblr, Wordpress,Twitter and Facebook.
Being ‘friendly’ competitors makes both more attractive to us all.
I love Posterous but think their words can back fire here. If they wanted to attract Tumblr users to graduate to their service, there are more intelligent ways especially as they have a great product.
Good point, Harold. I think Guy Kawasaki is the one who said “don’t worry about your competition, let your competition worry about you.”
Hi Brandon, I don’t think too highly of the comparisons that Posterous used against Tumblr. I think that in most people’s eyes the two are pretty similar. It’s nothing at all like the comparison between WordPress and Blogger. But I don’t think WordPress would stoop so low. If you have “good” stuff there are ways to make yourself stand out that are above putting the competition down. However in defense of Posterous, this tactic is something that is used all the time in the auto industry, and the toilet tissue makers :)
And how many times during Google I/O 2010 did they compare Android to iPhone….
When it comes to blogging, I only compete against myself. I guess that’s what I get for having more than one blog.
I had a guest post “rejected” because the blogger felt that I created too many links to their competitors. What I found really funny is that I never even thought of them as being his competitors – I just thought they were good resources to link out to.
Thanks for an interesting conversation.
Great perspective Ileane, and I am guessing that 75% of our readers would agree, so I’m anxious to see how this discussion continues.
I must admit that when I first started blogging (okay I’m still a newbie so that wasn’t all that long ago) I did keyword analysis to find out what other bloggers were in my target niche. I certainly considered them competitors.
After my first few weeks, I quickly figured out that there really isn’t any other competition out there unless you make them so. My experience has been that if you interact with other bloggers in your space and help them promote their blogs they return the favor.
In the end, I offer my blog community a perspective that only my unique experience can provide. Some will like this and some will not, but it isn’t something another blogger can 100% replace.
As hokey as it sounds, my experience thus far with the blogosphere has been one of community and support.
Synergy is a good word. We accomplish so much more when we’re driving in the same direction hitched together.
Bloggers, whatever their platform or niche or post frequency or popularity or whatever, should not be in competition with each other. It’s simply unnecessary. There *may* be a place for friendly competition, but I’d place the emphasis so much on ‘friendly’ that anything beyond mere banter should be avoided.
I don’t count arguments and differences of opinion as competition. That’s entirely different.
What Jean Sarauer says here is spot on. By promoting each other and engaging together, all positions are strengthened.
Quite true. I think it ultimately hurts us to be critical.
When you say offensive words in such a public place like the Internet, you only hurt yourself. I think Posterous tried to be funny in a Mac vs PC style and it went wrong.
The niche is competition, but in blogging it’s better to collaborate than to fight openly.
You’re right, Natalia, but I notice that Posterous is essentially posting one post per day urging people to switch from 15 different platforms. I wonder about their bigger strategy.
I don’t think we should see each other as competition, but more as colleagues. It would be competition if our readers had to choose only one, but no. The readers can read many blogs in their areas of interest.
I know i have more than 200 rss feed subscriptions on my Google Reader, and most of them of overlapping subjects.
It’s the internet – we can have it all =D
Colleagues is a good word. Great point about the size of the internet too!
I personally think that bloggers are just like any other community or group and there’s different tools for different kinds of writers. There’s really no reason to bash the competition when people use a particular service for a particular purpose.
Many would consider Wordpress and Blogger to have been competitors for some time, with each camp being fiercely loyal to their platform of choice. After having tried them both I never really considered one superior over the other, they just cater to different levels of users. I for one prefer the simplicity of Blogger, but there’s “different strokes for different folks.”
I think that we should try and learn from our fellow bloggers, the chances are if we’re reading their blogs, they know what they’re doing ad have something that we can learn from them.
Instead of ‘killing’ the competition, we should simply try and do our best to keep up with them and form our own uniqueness. Becoming unique not only sets us apart from other bloggers in the same niche, it also allows to be free, not having to live up to the standards our competition has created.
I personally have fallen in love with the platform of Tumblr. Why? It allows for pretty much anyone to voice and be themselves in the online world where I believe everyone should have a presence.
Sure it might seem like it’s for “highschoolers” but I see the online world still very young and heck we are really highschoolers trying to learn and practice everything at a “young age”.
Sure many might call themselves experts or say that it will be better if you had an actual blog through wordpress, but doesn’t it matter if you just have an online presence more than anything? To me Tumblr, makes it easy to start this.
I do like Tumblr as well, as do most of the Fuel folks. I think I find posterous more convenient at times, but I think Tumblr isn’t far behind. Great thoughts!
I’ve never used any of the two so I don’t want to compare. However, from the look of things Posterous are behind the times. They are still using business concepts of yester years where you do every thing possible to crush your competition. But they are missing it altogether.
As a blogger I’ve learnt to cooperate with other bloggers. Linking to your ‘competition’s’ (just have to use the word) good posts is a sure way of growing your own blog. Simply put there is no competition amongst bloggers.
Don’t we all want to visit other blogs in our niche and then seek some link back through comments?