Want to get a link? Complain… I was looking through some of my old posts, and I realized that the times that I have received links from other bloggers are almost exclusively on complaint or suggestion posts.
There is an upside to this. I know if I complain about a Microsoft product, my logs will show at least a handful of hits from Microsoft IP’s over the next few days. (This effect is even more pronounced if I include Robert Scoble’s name, coincidence?) I’ve also seen hits directly from other companies whose names have appeared in my posts. This is cool… The consumer has a voice, and the same search tools that are finding posts in my blog are indexing MSN Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournel, etc., so the barrier to entry is low. Still, I can’t help feeling a bit guilty for the fact that I get more traffic from negative posts than I do from positive posts. I even looked back and found that (in my opinion anyway) my postings have become more negative as time has progressed. I always hated the negative slant of TV news, and I feel bad that I fell into the same traffic/link-hungry rutt.
How can this get better? Well, I’m going to try to post about more positive topics in the future, and I’m going to make an effort to link to some positive posts as well. I know this isn’t going to even come close to changing the blogosphere, but at least my little neighborhood will have some glimmers of light.
One Man Shouting 
Bad news sells. It always has. Marshall McLuhan proposed the theory that bad news offsets the relentless good news carried in ads.
It’s probably an evolutionary response. You don’t need to be told that fruit is tasty, just that somebody died from eating the bad one.