Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Preserve the chain – how to make blogtag more valuable

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Christopher S Penn

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I inadvertently put a twist on blog tag games that makes total sense. When Chris Brogan tagged me with Aidan Hatch’s game, I added to it that you had to keep the chain alive – repost everyone who was tagged before you. This accomplishes three things:

  1. Lets you see who has gone before you and how long the chain is.
  2. Gives inbound link love to those before you
  3. Incentivizes you to preserve the rule so that people you tag link back to you in future generations

The last time we saw this kind of link generation was with the 2000 Bloggers project, and that brought lots of link love to everyone involved. This is a classic network effect – every person who fully participates brings added value to all the other participants, and encourages future participation, just like the purchase of every fax machine makes previous buyers’ purchases more valuable.

Finally, a benefit to those social scientists among us – this lets you create trees and maps with greater ease.

The next time you play a game of blog tag, will you preserve the chain?

Comments

3 responses to “Preserve the chain – how to make blogtag more valuable”

  1. Jay Moonah Avatar
    Jay Moonah

    Hey Chris,

    I was thinking about this when I saw you had posted all the links back and asked everyone else to include all the previous bloggers links as well. I kind of had mixed feelings about this idea. I think linking back to the original entry _only_ might actually be the better thing to do. Aside from generating lots of extra inbound links (which I do understand the value of, to an extent), doesn’t having having the complete list of previous bloggers in one entry actually _discourage_ visiting the previous entries?

    For instance, I made a point of looking at Aidan’s entry where I found he didn’t originate the game, his mom actually did, and she did based a previous meme that someone had tagged her for. If I had just read the names rather than going back I wouldn’t have seen this. I also saw the other people that those folks had tagged, and same thing when I linked backward and forward from the others who have been posting their songs. That’s part of the fun as well.

    Personally I think moving backward and forward through the chain via the links one level up and down is actually a lot more interesting, rather than seeing one entry that has links back to a dozen others. My two-cents.

    Reply
  2. Jay Moonah Avatar
    Jay Moonah

    Hey Chris,

    I was thinking about this when I saw you had posted all the links back and asked everyone else to include all the previous bloggers links as well. I kind of had mixed feelings about this idea. I think linking back to the original entry _only_ might actually be the better thing to do. Aside from generating lots of extra inbound links (which I do understand the value of, to an extent), doesn’t having having the complete list of previous bloggers in one entry actually _discourage_ visiting the previous entries?

    For instance, I made a point of looking at Aidan’s entry where I found he didn’t originate the game, his mom actually did, and she did based a previous meme that someone had tagged her for. If I had just read the names rather than going back I wouldn’t have seen this. I also saw the other people that those folks had tagged, and same thing when I linked backward and forward from the others who have been posting their songs. That’s part of the fun as well.

    Personally I think moving backward and forward through the chain via the links one level up and down is actually a lot more interesting, rather than seeing one entry that has links back to a dozen others. My two-cents.

    Reply
  3. Untwisted Vortex – Living in a Different Land » Blog Drive-Bys for 2007-04-02

    […] at Insights Into Christopher S. Penn wrote about an interesting way to tag other […]

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