A Discerning Look at Aggregation Posts

The blogosphere is ripe with list and collection style posts. Some days it feels like every 3rd post in my feed reader starts with a number. I’m posting one of those tomorrow and can’t help but feel a little crummy about it. Update: it’s tomorrow and here’s the post.

The Dilemma

Throughout my daily browsing habits I tag websites or posts if they either talk about or exemplify a certain design style. Using grunge web design as an example, if a post is about grunge or if the website itself is designed in grunge, then I tag it with ‘grunge’. I’ve been doing that for a few months and with an increasingly number of designs trying to go grunge I thought that it would make a good post to simply look through my delicious tags for grunge and smack them into a post.

So I took the time and got all the links into a post and organized them into meaningful groups. After doing so I couldn’t help but feel wrong about it. Something about not actually producing any of the content listed in the post bothered me. It bothered me because I felt like I was stealing others work, because I merely grouped a broad topic together, because others spent their time creating something and if my post goes viral or something similar, I’m benefiting from their work.

The Analysis

My sentiments about the blogosphere and what good blogging should be are becoming more and more aligned with practically everything Merlin Mann says. One thing in particular that he says that challenges me is that you should write every post with a person in mind. Imagine that that post is being written to them.

With that in mind, I expounded and analyzed my 39 Grunge Resources post.

Who is the post for?

I would say it’s mainly for me. Although I could find all these resources in my delicious tags, the post goes a bit further with the organization and makes it very easy to find what I want.  The post is also for the community. Grunge is getting very popular and this post can help people trying to gather resources on how to accomplish that design style.

Why am I writing the post?

Basically for links. The post falls right inline with what the definition of what linkbait is.

What do I plan to do with the post?

After it launches, I plan to submit it to a few of the social media sites that focus on design.

What do I want from  the post?

Ideally I’d like to make the front page of a few social media sites and get a few hundred hits. I want people to bookmark it and come back to it months later when they are getting around to designing something in grunge.

The Crux

When getting my Computer Science degree and starting off with CS101 I learned that the defining point between data or information is this: organization.

Although I haven’t produced any real content for the post, it’s the organization of the post that makes it viable.

That organization is also very vital to making the post’s content usable to others, which also helps validate some of my concerns.

The Conclusion

Although I think that people who publish aggregation posts aren’t wrong for doing it, for me, it just doesn’t feel right. I like knowing that when you read my blog you are getting to know me better through my writing. That you are reading my ideas and hearing my opinions. I can’t get that same feeling through the regurgitation of others content.

Apart from the grunge design posts mentioned, I don’t think I will be doing anymore pure aggregation style posts. That being said, I do hope you enjoy them and get some use from them. One is out now and the other should be less than a week away.

What’s your opinion on aggregation posts?