On Guest Blogging

[Moozik: Killing Joke - Love Like Blood]

I originally mentioned my confusion at the concept of guest blogging four years ago. I think most if not all of my original points are still valid today. Guest blogging along with "sorry I haven't posted in awhile" apologies are the two things about blogging that still make me go hmmmm.

One of the biggest guest blogging offenders just recently has been Andrew Sullivan. If you take a peek at his blog today you'll see all the subject lines suffixed with [name] to indicate that someone other than Andrew wrote the post. Obviously I'm not at all interested in what anyone other than Andrew has to say so I always skip over those guest posts and mutter under my breath.

Perhaps bloggers worry that readers will be annoyed and unsubscribe from their feed if there are no posts for a couple of days. But having someone other than the person I want to read post entries is almost the same thing isn't it? So no, that can't be the reason. Ok, maybe bloggers worry that they will lose eyeballs on their site if there are no posts for a couple of days. But if you don't read the entries via a RSS reader, you are compelled to visit the site yourself anyway right? So there would be no lack of eyeballs. So that can't be the reason either.

So what is the reason for wanting guest bloggers? I'm really starting to think it's just an overinflated sense of self-importance.