Recession Is the New Sarah Palin for Technology Bloggers

I often find it quite funny how technology bloggers manage to make absolutely any event or piee of news tech-related if we know that it will be popular among internet users on any given day. So even if we are supposed to write about web services only, for example, we can never refrain from an occasional iPhone or Large Hadron Collider post when we know that these topics will be particularly hot during the day. And hot here means that thousands upon thousands of people will be searching for the words we include in the posts - occasionally arriving to our posts from Google, the largest gate to the web for the majority of internet users.

I have often heard bloggers criticized for using the “dishonest” SEO practices like writing keyword-rich posts but unfortunately there’s no point in professional blogging if no one reads what you have to say - thus we really have to rely on search engine optimization and writing the posts both for our loyal and new readers to find them interesting and for search algorithms to be able to discover these posts and bring those new readers to us.

Of course there are other sources of traffic, including social media sites like Twitter or Digg - but they really need a blogger to know the playfield very well to be able to get anything from there. There are occasional miracles as well - like getting a lead on Google News or a quote in a New York Times blog - but they can hardly be relied upon as they are far from stable.

The majority of bloggers know exactly where traffic comes from and the main conclusion is that the tried and true search traffic still rules it all. Search is no doubt the most consistent and stable traffic source that will always be there even if you don’t post anything new at all.

There is no doubt that the September full of political and financial news has provided a unique opportunity for numerous online publishers focusing on various topics that are very popular with internet users. And for many publishers it has turned to be a real success. Yesterday Washington Post named Sarah Palin a “media hit” stating that many publishers have already reported record traffic in September - some of them quoting their extensive coverage of everything related to Gov. Sarah Palin as one of the most important sources for traffic.

Sarah Palin popularity in the blogosphere according to BlogPulse

Of course we had plenty of topics to discuss about Sarah Palin, her pregnant daughter, her private emails and her often paradoxical opinions on international politics. I myself was more than surprised to see Sarah Palin frequently making appearance on major technology blogs - even without any obvious reason to make her technology-related. But I’ve started this post from the fact that we have already reached perfection in the art of making everything tech-related if we see good search potential in it - so this is no surprise, really.

The only topic about Sarah Palin that had all the reasons to have Governor on technology blogs was her hacked Yahoo Mail account with all her private information immediately available to anyone interested in taking a sneak peek. I know that a rare blogger ever thinks about moral aspects before publishing a post and I don’t see any problem with writing about things like porn startups here. But unfortunately in this particular case I felt terribly uncomfortable about getting into details of the entire process and delivering new details to our readers here -I just did not feel I myself was personally inclined to get into that particular topic.

Of course now I know that this was not really a wise decision as I should have known better and even if I don’t really badly need all that extra traffic from search queries, there is never too much traffic so after thinking of it a lot I now understand that traffic and ethics should be strictly separated at all times - you can hardly maintain equal positions for both of them.

But the most important fact is that technology blogosphere will always find yet another way to discuss some hot topic. And now I believe we already have a new topic on hand - and that topic is recession (financial crisis, economic meltdown, financial turmoil or whatever you yourself choose to call it). And I believe it is quite visible that every blogger finds a way to have a say on the recession hoping not to leave the readers without any recession-related information at all and not to send them to competitors looking for such information. As a result, economic crisis looks like becoming the next Sarah Palin on the web with technology bloggers exercising in figuring out more and more ways to discuss the financial events in the US and everywhere in the world - starting from simply discussing stock market situation and initial layoffs and on to more positive approaches where bloggers try to be composed not to provoke further panic as they feel their responsibility for the situation to a certain extent.

These days it looks like bloggers don’t ask ourselves questions like “What should I write about for the next post?” - instead the question is “Is there anything else about the crisis I could write additionally that no one else has already noticed?”. Of course it is absolutely understandable that bloggers are trying to deliver what the audience wants - and that is news and commentary about the economic crisis. The demand here determines the supply from the blogosphere. But what really is amazing to me is the unlimited fantasy and creativity of the technology blogosphere that manages to find technology where it should not be noticeable at all and will continue to notice it for as long as web users continue to search for information. In the meanwhile I’ll go exercise in parasitizing on financial crisis if you excuse me.

Photo by mape_s used under Creative Commons