The Entrecarder

I guess it started with the "U Comment - I Follow" movement, and was adapted for the Entrecard community by Lee Doyle to read U Drop - I Follow. I admit that for a while I was thinking of using "U Drop - I Smile" but figured it would engender the wrong reaction in folks. However, I have seen a "U Drop - I'm Happy" that made me smile.

Now, Deimos Tel`Arin (ahkong.net), who was one of the first Entrecarders to publish a list of sites to drop cards on, and was the first (to my knowledge) to come up with a Reciprocative Dropping group, is pushing a "U Subscribe - I Follow" fellowship. You subscribe to his blog feed via email and he will return the favor and subscribe to your blog's feed. What a great idea!

Perhaps you are saying "Duh" and yet there are some Entrecard-specific dynamics that make this new movement a valuable one, at least to me. I haven't yet run contests or used any other device to encourage readers to subscribe to my main blog, The Entrecarder and it took me almost two months to put a standard button on my site where folks could easily subscribe to my feed. Over the past couple of months I have routinely signed up for blog feeds as part of contests and usually unsubscribe a short time later. I don't feel much loyalty to a blogger just because they gave me a chance to win something, even more so when I don't get much from their blog entries. The same might hold true for the U-I Subscribers, but at least they are having to see my feed for a nanosecond before they move on.

I actually prefer to read blog posts via email feeds because I don't have to break my rythm when card dropping. I seem to be able to scan an emailed post quicker than reading it on the webpage and then just archive it when done. And for those who chose to only send a partial entry in their feed? Hasta la vista, baby. I don't care who you are, if you think your writing is so wonderful that you are going to get me to click through to your site to read beyond the teaser, I've got one word for you: Unsubscribe.

I expect that the honor system will have to be the order of the day for the U-I Subscribers and that's ok. It's not worth the time to try and track who is commenting back or dropping back and if someone really doesn't like what you are writing, then let them drop the feed.

Note: Deimos does something that is really slick and that I will probably start doing myself. He updates his Entrecard profile with the specific address of each new post so that the traffic goes to that page and builds a better overall site ranking as a result.