In yesterday’s entry on Pearl Jam I wrote:

I don’t worry about content thieves that much anymore. Most of the time when someone takes an article from here they at least provide a link back to the site and I have to wonder how many people are reading my content on my site versus the number that reads it elsewhere? I’m guessing not that many even bother to read it elsewhere and if they do and like it, there is a good chance they will come here to the original source and stick around. In a twisted form of logic when we complain about content thieves (the ones that provide proper attribution) we are acting like Sony who doesn’t want their content being seen in as many places as possible.

And I mean what I say. If you want to syndicate my content on your site with proper attribution (a link back to me) then by all means go ahead and do it. I’m a producer of content and I can only see the benefits of having my content in as many places as possible. One of the best podcasts around is Ask A Ninja could easily just keep their videos on their own site, but instead they use YouTube to distribute them which also allows their audience to post their videos on their site as well.

Now if you like what you see you will more than likely go and look for more episodes which may or may not be on my site, but eventually if you become a fan of the series you will go directly to them to get the content because there is no need to wait for me to post it. You produce content and you want as many eyeballs on that content as possible so why limit the places it can be seen? Maybe your concern is in a drop in pageviews, but what kind of effect do you really think a system like this has on your site? Maybe since your sole model of revenue revolves around advertising (entry coming up on that) you are a bit concerned with where your content is being viewed.

The folks over at WebDev FeedHouse use my full entry feed to post my content on their site and this doesn’t irk me one bit. What happens if someone reads that site and subscribes to their feeds instead of mine? It’s definitely a possibility, but they are still reading my content, but they are missing the ensuing discussion, which should entice them to come to my site. Either way my name is getting out there. I start to get concerned when content I produce and am expecting payment for starts to get passed around for free. Even when that starts to happen I am going to try and find as many channels to stick that content in as possible.

The FeedPass Dilemma

Today, Mike Arrington wrote about FeedPass and how it monetizes the content we work so hard to produce. Unsurprisingly, some members of the blogosphere are not too happy with this because they feel as though another company is making money off of their content. It seems they have jumped to conclusions.

If you look closely, FeedPass only post excerpts of your content and the last four items from your feed. Hardly dangerous to me and it seems that it helps push more subscribers to you then pull them away. Now are people really concerned because their excerpts are on their along with an ad that FeedPass is banking off of them? When did we become so greedy with our content, yet so willing to share it with feeds and post YouTube/Google Videos on our site? I can’t say I see a use for FeedPass, but really I don’t see the harm in it either. For further discussion of FeedPass I suggest you read Pete Cashmore’s take on it along with the ensuing discussion.

Tools to Spread

So if I am encouraging people to post my content on their sites what tools can I provide to help them with the process? Better yet, there has to be a 1,001 sites that do this kind of stuff already so if you know any please let me know.

Please don’t walk away from this entry thinking that I believe all content should be free and anybody should be able to do with it what they want. I’m just saying that with the content I produce on this site I don’t really have an issue with it being spread across the web as others might. I see more pluses than minuses when looking at the bigger picture.

Originally posted on May 21, 2006 @ 3:27 pm

I like to think that Whitespace was my “professional” site where I could share my limited amount of wisdom to the world so when thinking of a new domain name I thought it would be cool to play off the word ‘wisdom’ because ‘knowledge’ was too big for me to type (and yes I know they are different). Here are some of the domains I tried to snap up:

• wisdum.com
• wisdumb.com
• wizdum.com
• wizdumb.com

Obviously I wasn’t successful in obtaining any of those so I went with ‘Wisdump’ and I am really happy about the choice simply because the name is stupid. You don’t see the ‘wis’ and all you hear is ‘dump’ which could conjure all types of images for you and therefore keeping it memorable.

To be more humane I get to say that this is the site where I am allowed to dump my knowledge onto the masses with regards to my professional subjects. So welcome to a new beginning and I look forward to pushing this site to new heights without the burden of the 9rules.com weighing me down or MovableType.

So please update your feeds to the new feed and let us get the ball rolling on this site. No it won’t stay in grayscale this was done in just a couple of hours so I will have to find a color scheme appropriate for my dumpage.

Originally posted on May 17, 2006 @ 2:59 am

Wisdump has a lot of content. A lot of great content. It’s been around since 2004 and amidst all the changes this website has gone through, the most important thing is for readers to gain access to these thoughtful, timeless articles that would otherwise be buried in the archives. Ladies and gentlemen, the Best of Wisdump is here.

Now I’m not too happy about arranging these posts reverse chronologically, but for now it will do. But I would also like to know what you think are the best posts on Wisdump, and how we should present them. Should we let readers rate posts? Use a popular posts plugin? Let your voice be heard in the comments!

Originally posted on April 8, 2008 @ 4:25 pm