Ectomo Methodology: The Via Chain

One thing we’re going to be doing at Ectomo.com as we try to build it up is write up some of our experiments and the methodology behind them. This is partially to give our readers ideas for their blogs and partially to get feedback. We’re eventually planning on having a Wiki to coalesce these ideas, but for now, we’re going to make them posts.

The Via Chain: You might have noticed that our posts have more links than normal. Conventional blogging protocol is you give a nod to whatever blog pointed you to a post. But here’s the dark and dirty secret: pro bloggers hate giving vias. There is an irrational belief — and my mind has feverishly embraced it as well — that once your readers figure that each and every post you make has not sprung a priori into the blogger’s mind, absorbed in the uterine slosh from a transhumanist mother with a fiber optic cable for an umbilical cord, that they’ll stop reading. Not to mention the business aspects of it: why is that multi-million dollar company bothering to pay you when Goofus McFerguson is blogging it for free (and oftentimes better, out of pure passion?)

For Ectomo, we’ve decided to take a different approach and embrace the million man 69 orgy of circular cannibalism that is the truth of the blogosphere.

Part of our reason is practical: the more blogs we link, the more bloggers will discover us and the more links we’ll receive in turn. But also, having been knocked down a peg, trying to start a blog without corporate backing, we’re suddenly sympathetic to just how hard it can be to get your blog read. And we’re sorry we weren’t more sympathetic before.

So here’s how it’ll work. When we post something at Ectomo, the first link at the bottom of the post will be to what we’re directly linking to. Then, we’ll link our first via blog. If that via blog has linked another via, we’ll link that as well. And our intention is to follow the via chain as far down as it goes.

Here’s an example:

Nymphet Steampunk Cephalophilia [Domain] : via1 : via2 : via3

Like a lot of things we’re trying on Ectomo, it’s a practical decision: we’re attempting to maximize exposure with the minimum amount of work. But if you see a post here that you like, we’d encourage you to go visit some of the sites listed in the via chain. Chances are, if they’ve posted one good thing, they’ve posted a hundred others, and if we lose you to them… well, hey. It’s a better blog for you anyway. And fuck you.