Blogging 2007-17 in 1 graphic: the fate of RSS. Ribbonfarm peaked at ~7000 (green, left Y), now at ~2000, of which ~1000 are actually email.
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...So how did ribbonfarm keep growing (last year was a record)? Social sharing #1 and Google #2. Both have "pump" modes and "organic" modes
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..."pumping" distro (SEO, clickbaiting) doesn't create growth. It creates a) volatility b) falling reach c) falling trust.
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The *only* reason to pump is if biz model is based on selling vanity metrics to somebody (impressions to advertisers, traffic to investors)
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Making no moral judgment on either, but if you have no realistic path to the scale where advertising or OPM is meaningful, pumping is dumb
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