New developer.* Links Blog

One type of blog post that has not typically been popular on the developer.* Blogs web site is the "link post," which is a blog post with the primary purpose of directing the reader somewhere else.

These take different forms. Sometimes a link post just has one link in it, perhaps with an accompanying comment or explanation from the blogger. Some link posts contain several links, perhaps a whole list. Some bloggers like to post to their blogs nearly every day the interesting links they encountered that day. Some readers love to discover new links this way--from someone else's recommendation.

The funny thing, though, about link posts is that some readers *don't* like them, and would rather skip them. I've heard people say they stopped reading a blog because it "degraded" into a lot of link posting.

Link posts have traditionally been a little out of place (though never unwelcome) in the developer.* Blogs space because of the prevalence of essay-style blogging and the way that recent posts are presented on the main Blogs page. It's just a quirk of the way the blogging community has developed here.

The purpose, then, of the developer.* Links Blog is to remedy this situation. Bloggers who like to post link posts can post them as frequently as they like. Readers who like to discover links and interesting things to read can follow the home page of the developer.* Links Blog, or subscribe to the feed. And developer.* readers who prefer to skip the link posts don't have to look at them. Everybody wins, especially me, since I'm addicted to links.

The developer.* editor (that's me) will continue to moderate the posts in terms of promoting them to the front page and figuring out which blog a post fits into. If you post a links post to your blog, it won't go onto the front page or the main feed, but you can include it in the Links Blog without any assistance from me: just select the "developer.* Links Blog" entry near the bottom of the category list when you post.

Happy blogging, and thanks for reading (and writing).

Dan