Have you heard about reblogging, offered via wordpress.com blogs? This was news to me, although it has been out since 2010.
Apparently, if you use WordPress.com for your blog (meaning the blog is hosted on WordPress’ servers) and are signed in, you can “like” blog posts you read. The author is alerted – I assume only if the author, too, uses WordPress.com – and then you have the option to “reblog” the post onto your blog.
This will add the blog post title and a “snippet” of text plus a photo to your blog and link back to the original blog for the full version.
This is similar to how Tumblr functions, and is in the same spirit of “retweeting” for Twitter and the “share” feature for Facebook.
I had not heard about this until Vin at BierBattered.com asked to join our Complete List of Beer Blogs. We check out blogs to make sure they are truly blogs and, in the process, I noticed Vin had a sizable number of “reblogged” blog posts on his site.
Because there are sites out there that automatically pull entire blog posts from other blogs – mostly in an attempt to create an SEO-powerful site that can make advertising money at the expense of the original authors – we are leery of any copying that does not include the approval of the author. In this case, WordPress itself created reblogging and it only includes part of the text.
Check out Vin’s site, scroll down a bit, and you’ll see a number of reblogged entries, all in accordance with WordPress’ reblogging program. What do you think?
WordPress.com makes advertising revenue from every bit of content they can attract to and retain on their servers, regardless of its provenance. It then becomes the problem of the original author to prove whether what’s now showing on WordPress.com as well as on his own site violates his copyright. Late last year, WordPress.com announced it was pushing back and suing some of those filing infringement complaints on the grounds they were trying to censor WordPress.com users.
When an 800-lb. gorilla decides it wants your bananas, it just takes your bananas.
I wasn’t aware of it till someone reblogged a piece from my blog. Initially I was suspicious, but once I saw how it works I think it’s fine.
It drives traffic to my blog since only the intro to the source article is displayed. If the reader wants to see more then they’re sent to my blog. There’s no more need to get my permission than there would be if it were a tweet mentioning my blog. However, reblogging allows other people to add longer comments about the article than if they tweeted a link.
Hi Paul, I would say that on platforms like WordPress.com and Tumblr where “reblogging” is built in as a feature, it’s totally fine.
If you’re getting permission to repost, and the reposting shows the original source and link back to original source at the beginning of your post, I would say you’re in the green. Permission AND credit are key there. Unfortunately, there are too many people who snake good content for their own sake and that makes me weary.
I will repost from other blogs, I always state where I found it and give the author credit. Am I breaking any copyright laws, or doing anything unethical? I honestly don’t know being new to the blogging world. FYI People have reposted my original content the same way I did, I look at it as they are promoting my website!
Thanx for your feedback,
Craft beer Paul