Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias, trendsetters of the blogosphere if there were any, are assembling "assorted links" once a day or so. As do I and Yves Smith, not to mention the Herculean efforts of Mark Thoma.
Does anyone click on these things or do you simply wish to feel you have experienced a more comprehensive menu of what you have refused to learn?
A second-order question is whether or not I should care about the answer to the first query.
← Previous Comments
I love the assorted links. Please, keep them coming.
Please keep providing links.
I love assorted links posts. Although right now my “Read it later” folder is stocked up with linked articles.
Very much. I would think they are at least as good as your average posts.
There is so much information out there that it is great to find people like you who filter me into interesting stuff. Thanks. I read them all the time.
Basically the only reason I look at nakedcapitalism is for the assorted links and to skim the other posts for interested tidbits. I also like the assorted links here at MR, though I read all the other posts, too.
What it is difficult to do with an assorted links post is to get a good comment thread. I doubt that affects whether you care whether we care about assorted links…
Yes; most of the links you select are interesting to me, so I continue to follow them. (But I have little patience with bloggers who only link to the same few things everyone else is linking to, and generally stop reading those blogs altogether.)
Should you care? I assume you post them so others will see them, since you’ve already seen them yourself, so it would seem somewhat silly for you not to care…
I like it when you link to puffins.
I agree with Jacob. I wish I had a better idea of what the link was before deciding whether or not to click.
I follow some of the links if your little blurb leaves me intrigued.
As to whether you should care – that entirely depends on why you are posting them. Are you posting to increase google rankings or expanding readership? Then certainly.
If it is just because you like sharing things you find interesting – then absolutely not.
Keep going with the assorted links, please. I click over 50% and probably read half of the linked articles all the way through.
Yes, Yes.
There is a lot to read out there. By clicking on the links I am trusting your judgment in providing your readers a good eclectic selection.
I love links!
I am a fan. Two remarks though. On the one hand, I like the simplicity of your enigmatic presentation. On the other hand, more context would be welcomed. See Tim O’Reilly : http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/four-short-links-21-may-2009.html
aren’t all blogs really just assorted links? (with varied levels of adding “2 cents”)
I enjoy them and usually open them all.
And I would guess that the links will be better if you don’t care if readers follow them.
Since you do it to signal your breadth, no, you shouldn’t care much whether we actually click. But you might find a more efficient way to signal. (Yes, I do click.)
abnormal returns is a daily read…i read 100% of the links and it really depends how many i click through.
Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, chairs the delegation of the European Union at the EU-Russia summit in Khabarovsk. The Russian-speaking politician conducted successful reforms to establish capitalism instead of socialism in his country. However, the European Union sees the Czech leader as a politician who impedes the process of the European integration. Klaus has never released any anti-Russian statements, despite the problem of the notorious US missile defense system.
BREAKING NEWS
Russia-EU relations reach peak of tension
Meet Russia’s Pamela Anderson – Anfisa Chekhova
More…
Klaus is considered the prime adversary of the European integration. His counterparts did not want him to chair the European Union six months ago. Vaclav Klaus refused to introduce the euro in his country. He was the only European politician, who welcomed the results of the Lisbon Treaty referendum in Ireland in 2008 (the EU Constitution thus remained unchanged).
In February, Klaus compared the European Union to the USSR, when he said that the EU had become a non-democratic structure that left no freedom of choice, similarly to communist regimes of Eastern Europe.
Vaclav Klaus is probably the most prominent politician in Europe’s former socialist camp during the recent 15 years. He became the finance minister of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republics after the collapse of socialism in 1989. Klaus became the president of the Czech Republic in 2003 and was reelected last year.
Vaclav Klaus’s reforms to change the political and economic regimes in the country were absolutely painless. Czech cars are competitive and reputable in Europe; the country’s agriculture can fully supply the nation with high-quality and inexpensive food. The Czechs do not travel to neighboring states for earnings as it happens in most of other countries of the former socialist camp. The living standard in the Czech Republic has become higher than that in Poland, Hungary and in the Baltic States.
In the beginning of the 1990s, Klaus wanted to make his country become a NATO member. However, he harshly criticized the wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq in 1999 and in 2003. He also stood up against Kosovo’s independence. He repeatedly supported the idea to deploy elements of the US missile defense system in the Czech Republic, although he did not take any efforts to give the process a go.
Klaus’s attitude to Russia has been changing periodically. He was a totally pro-Western politician in the beginning of the 1990s. As soon as he became the president, he said that he did not share anti-Russian sentiments of his predecessor, Vaclav Havel. Klaus has never said anything negative about Russia during the recent six years. When Georgia attacked South Ossetia in 2008, the Czech president stated that Georgia should not be justified for its actions.
On May 13 Klaus set out a protest against the attempts to rewrite the history of Second World War and urged other leaders not to blacken the role of the USSR and Russia in the history of the 20th century.
Vaclav Klaus can considerably improve the relations between Russia and the European Union. However, his European counterparts may not want it at all.
In general, I think bloggers post (and especially, re-post) assorted links too much, without adding any analysis. Long excerpts don’t qualify as analysis. On my own site, I try not to re-post links from bloggers big enough that my readers have probably seen them already, except when I have analysis to add. (Of course, in my case, that’s complicated slightly by the fact that my readership comes from two almost entirely distinct blogospheres, and I’m trying to cross-polinate.)
The top bloggers do have a unique role as content filters, however. You have a large enough readership that for many of your readers you will be a first source of a link, even a popular one. That makes them worthwhile, I think. I do find them a big enigmatic, though – an average of, say, three more words per link might save me a lot of time clicking on things that I’m not interested in. The current format has a certain visual appeal, though.
I never click on assorted links (OK almost never). I prefer the short lead-in that I get in my Google Reader. If intrigued with the beginning I read the rest.
Yours are the only “assorted links” posts that I pay attention to, due to their simultaneous eclecticism and high percentage of interesting content. Too often economic bloggers all link to the same stories and to each other in a flurry of redundancy that is aggravating to try to ignore. Don’t change what you’re doing.
absolutely i click on those that grab me, nearly every day. i scan most but will read a handful on the bus each week. but there is a link limit of a list that’s useful: i think 5-10 is probably about right. less than that and it feels like you’re trying to point me to or plugging for each (turn off), more than that and i move on (tune out).
I frequently click them, particularly the more miscellaneous stuff like corvid intelligence. I also would prefer slightly more descriptive link text.
I came here following a link from the Free Exchange blog of the economist. The daily link collections are valuable because I use them to trace interesting economic background topics/stories. And in my humble opinion, Yves Smith wasted the page by adding guest posts which seem … uninteresting, written by people who try to sell theirs views – compared with these guest articles, the daily link post is much more interesting.
Click rate: 40% of all
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed.