Have you guys ever wondered why a lot of bloggers seem to blog about blogging? I have… a lot. But the answer is pretty simple. It's a question of popularity. You see, I have visited a lot of social bookmarking and networking communities and it seems that only certain topics keep getting more and more popular, no matter who writes about them. With no offense to communities like Digg and BloggingZoom, it appears to me that the majority of topics that become popular are the ones that either talk about technology, celebrity gossip, politics or (in the case of BloggingZoom) making money online through blogging. In fact, I think about 80-90% of the topics submitted to BZ fall into the category of blogging about blogging. It's about finding the lowest common denominator in this instance and that is blogging.

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(This is a guest author article.)

I've been on the internet for nearly 6-7 years, participated in a dozen online forums/communities and left several of them and my advice to people who don't like a particular community: leave. Stop visiting that website, delete your bookmark for that site, remove the RSS feed from your feedreader and resist the temptation to return to that community website. If you do, chances are you'll be active there again on a regular basis and become frustrated with whatever provoked you in the first place. It's not worth fighting for something that really is outside your control. Avoid emotional attachment as much as possible.

So here are my tips:

• Completely remove all traces of that website from your computer – bookmarks, RSS/Atom feeds, history and so on. Turn off e-mail notifications from that particular website or if that's not possible, remove your e-mail ID from that website (or turn it into something nonsensical).
• Don't post farewell messages. It attracts flaming and sarcasm and you'll be tempted to respond again to those messages thus creating a chain reaction. Also by leaving quietly, you keep yourself in the good books of that community.
• Try to find another online community which interests you or just stop using the Internet so much. There is a life outside.
• Don't get addicted to social networking websites. It's fun once in a while, but they offer nothing more than a glorified contact list. Your real friends will always contact you by e-mail.

The internet is a useful place to get information, but there are also addictive websites out there. Avoid the temptation to waste hours (or days) of your life on online communities that don't serve any useful purpose for you.

Long time readers of my blog may have noticed that I no longer use the Digg and Reddit post badges. I also no longer use the shareit plugin (or the gregarious plugin that includes it). I replaced all of it with a single drop down list.

There were multiple reasons (in no particular order) for my desire to replace them:

• The javascript code was executed for each and every post badge. On a single page, that's not too bad. But on the front, index page, it will execute for every article for the number of posts you have it set for. 10 times for 10 posts. It slows the rendering of the page down, sometimes stalling it if Digg or Reddit are having server problems on their ends. It does no good for me to make adjustments to the theme to make it display faster if something like this will slow it down.
• Having post badges on every article, or even articles I think are worthy, screams out to the casual reader "Digg me!" or "Reddit me!". While that works with people who have a friendly disposition, it can turn away those who see it as shameless self-promotion and aren't quite so friendly.
• Having a full page of badges with zeros on them makes a blog look abandoned to some. This is especially true if all the posts are sparse, having only one or two short paragraphs each.
• Seasoned users of Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and others see the post badges as "spammy devices" and won't use them at all. In fact, the diggers may bury you, the redditers may vote you down and the stumblers may give you give you a thumbs down just for that reason alone. Don't laugh. I've seen the results of it happening with my own two eyes.
• The "Shareit" email function is a no-no. Anyone can send your article to anyone else, as many times as they want. I checked outgoing links and a single person used it once to spam someone several times from my blog. That's my server IP they're using, not their own. I don't want my server blacklisted for anything I don't have control over.

You may think some of what I stated are wild assumptions. I assure you they're not. I have read enough comments on enough blogs and had enough discussions with enough people through email to support my assumptions.

On a positive note, if all you ever write is quality content (sure, yeah, right), then you can put anything you want on your page and it'll do well on the social networks. I had one where it really didn't matter (it's my top post) because the subject matter was near and dear to the diggers. Of course, I didn't KNOW that at the time. Look at my third top post (slowly inching its way to the number two spot). That was stumbled and viewed over six thousand times in less than 12 hours. I have no StumbleUpon post badge on my blog and I never had one. I wonder if it would have been that popular had it got the "thumbs down" by top stumblers right away?