Being randomly ‘reblogged’ and how to respond.

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No photos today, or at least not on this post.  This post is to find out how fellow readers and bloggers react to having posts ‘reblogged’.

I’m not talking about ‘reblogging’ by those of us who have a genuine interest in a post, and think that it is worthy of increased circulation in the blogosphere.  Such reblogging is normally accompanied by sensible and relevant comment.  This would of course be accepted as a compliment.

I’ve been blogging for a little over a year now, and in that time I have had 3 or 4 posts ‘reblogged’.  On each occasion, the reblogging was carried out by someone who appeared to have no real interest in the post, didn’t seem to produce much original material of their own on their blog, and may, or may not, possibly have had commercial ambitions for their blog.  The posts seem to have been chosen in a random manner.  It may be uncharitable to say this, but it appears that they are just trying to boost the amount of material on their blog, and thus increase their readership.  In some cases these blogs have been quite recently started.

Now I guess that there could be some ‘spin off’ value of increased readership of my blog, but that isn’t of particular interest to me.  If these bloggers had made any sort of comment about my posts, then it would be easy to decide how to respond.  As it is though, I don’t really know how to react.

I’m just getting this off my chest while it is fresh in my mind, having had two such occurrences in the last 24 hours.

13 thoughts on “Being randomly ‘reblogged’ and how to respond.”

  1. You have the prerogative to approve or disapprove the re-blogging when they notify you. Use that function if you don’t like who is re-blogging. It has happened to me many times some I didn’t like!

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    • Thanks HJ. I spotted that option and expect that I will not approve them, but that doesn’t stop them does it? I also wonder whether it is a bit ‘short sighted’ of me to do this.The other option is to mark as spam, but I don’t really know what point there is in that either.

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    • I don’t think it does us any harm Helen, but I just don’t really understand why anyone should want to reblog posts in a fairly random manner, when they have no interest. I just find it a bit irritating, that’s all.

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  3. I can assure you the first time I was re-blogged I wondered what the hell was going on, but as I found out, and as you point out there seem to be two types of re-bloggers. The second type – new blogs, picking posts at random – I really don’t understand what that’s about, especially if the re-blogger hasn’t done an ‘About’ page. But then, if I think about it, does it matter? As far as I can see, they don’t claim my work is theirs, it might widen my audience (though I’m not bothered about that) and I haven’t thought of a downer yet – though as I’m relatively new I’m not sure if I’m particularly ‘street-wise’ as far as blogging is concerned. Is there some sort of underground competition going on – see who can get the fastest numbers in the shortest time using other peoples work? Dunno.,

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    • That’s pretty much the way I see it Stephen. I don’t really know what harm it can do me. As you say, they are not claiming the work. It just irritates me that they are doing it, with no real interest in the posts. In these last two cases at least, they haven’t done an ‘about’ page on themselves.

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  4. The first couple of times it happened to me I was flattered by the fact that people thought it was good enough to share and to be fair some of the bloggers had genuine interests in the subject matter, whether it was books or travel. On the whole I’m happy for people to reblog my work, after all it does increase the reach of my material, but I do think it is a bit sad that some individuals have no original material of their own. Where I would draw the line is for people to pass the work off as their own or to use it for their own commercial gain,

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    • I think you blog is different, in that it does present a lot of good, educational, travel information, and is more likely to be ‘reblogged’ because of this. It should still deserve comment when this happens though. What irritates me is when my posts are ‘reblogged’ onto a site with no common theme at all, with no comment at all. I just need to get over it and carry on regardless as long as they don’t openly claim the post, which is unlikely.

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  5. Hi Dave! I reblog images that really strike me – maybe one or two a week or less – but I think (hope!) I belong in paragraph 2 of your post – the images are very striking to me and I want others to see them and to hear what I think about them – I’m especially keen on this if I think the that the source blog may not be reaching many of my blog’s subscribers.

    I’ve also had some of my posts reblogged and I’m happy for people to do this.

    But I too have seen blogs that seem to consist of reblogs with little context or comment – I must say that this seems a rather shallow and meaningless activity to me. Cheers! Adrian

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    • Hi Adrian. Yes, your reblogs are always purposeful and well considered. I am sure that readers value them.

      I guess the type I was identifying doesn’t do any real harm, but it just seems a bit daft to me. If they don’t produce any added value themselves, then why bother?

      Anyway, I’m going to drop it now. Thanks. Dave

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  7. The extra exposure might or might not add much value. Though, I think as long as they don’t try to claim the work as theirs, it’s harmless. It’s unfortunate there are people who wants the glory but doesn’t want to work for it.

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