Bring Back the Old Blogosphere

Carl Milsted, Jr on Apr 30 22:24:40

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Once upon a time, blogs tended to be interesting.

Trust was high. Bloggers freely linked to each other, both within the text of their their posts and in blogrolls. Technorati linked blogs together with an automated tagging system. There were trackbacks, pingbacks, and blog carnivals. Even directories were meaningful.

Then Spammers Ruined Everything

Scoring high in Google's search results became very valuable. The easy way to rank high was to write boilerplate comments with user names that included words like "viagra" and "mesothelioma." Bloggers had to fight bots.

And then Google had to figure out which blogs were fake. Search engine optimizers create networks of interlinked fake blogs in order to generate "link juice" to fool the search engines.

Real "link juice" became valuable. Blogrolls disappeared. Even links within articles became "no follow."

Today, the lack of trust between blogs has gotten to the point that even established bloggers have given up on independent blogging, joining various online magazines instead.

A New Blogging Platform

In case you haven't noticed, Conntects is both a social network and a blogging platform. You are reading an example blog right now. The tools I am using to write this documentation are identical to the tools users get to use to write their own blogs.

Like the blogging platforms of yore, theming options are limited. At the moment all you can do is customize your About page. If there is sufficient demand, we will add some other customization options, but Conntects will likely never be as customizable as today's Wordpress.

But here is what you will get with Conntects:

• All the groovy text formatting that you saw in earlier parts of this tour.
• A really powerful commenting system.
• The speed and security that comes with a platform written in a compiled language. No PHP for hackers to attack.
• No messing around with installation scripts or plugins.
• Vetted commenters.

Making Spammers Pay

When we get to full production mode, only paid members will be allowed to comment. This automatically makes spamming expensive. Once you ban an annoying commenter, the aspiring spammer will have to pay to create a new character.

(And if the banking system allows us to validate real identities through credit cards or checks, aspiring spam outfits will have to pay fresh people as well. Whether this is possible is a research project still in progress.)

Conntects will feature other anti spam measures over time, of course. But simply the fact that Conntects will be a paid system aimed at US customers only will put spammers at a disadvantage from the get-go.

A Fresh Tag Space

While spamming is to be frowned upon, Conntects meant to be a place to be seen. (For those want to be seen.) Polite self-promotion is encouraged. Your relevant comments on other people's blogs will point to your personal About page. You can promote your blog(s) there to your heart's content.

And public posts can have tags. (Or will, once this feature is implemented.) Just like in the old days, tags will automatically interlink related posts. If you aren't famous yet, this will be a way to be seen.

Unlike the old days, tags will be rationed in order to keep them valuable and relevant. For those writing real blog posts, this will be barely noticeable. For aspiring spammers this will be a major nuisance.

It will also be a bother for micro-bloggers. If you like making 20 tagged posts/day, then you might be better off sticking to Twitter or one of Twitter's clones.

Or you might use Twitter for your micro blog posts and use Conntects for your occasional longer post.

Gas Money for Early Adopters

When Conntects launches its paid version (on the .com domain), there will be an affiliate program. Early adopters will be issued coupon codes which they can use to give discounts to friends and fans. When you recruit others, you will get a share of the payments of those whom you recruit. (Details to be worked out before the official launch.)

This will not be a full on multilevel marketing scheme. Don't quit your day job. But if you have a reasonably popular blog, but you aren't a big enough celebrity to justify going to Substack or Locals, moving to Conntects might be just the thing to earn some gas money and get away from the spammers.

Vaporware Warning

Not all the features described above are implemented yet.

As of August 6, 2023, Conntects does not have:

• The ability to ban people from open blogs.
• Any payment system or related affiliate system.

You are reading this on Conntects.net, which is a test platform. Those who join the test platform will be welcome to stay on the test platform for free. But once the paid version goes up, the test platform will likely close to new memberships.