Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Whats up over at Microsoft?

 

I just cleaned out my RSS feed reader for all the inactive feeds that were not being updated. Fortunately Google Reader is good at giving me that info.

 

But over half of the inactive feeds were from Microsoft staff blogs, mostly about Office products, Sharepoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Word etc. In most cases the sites had never been updated to say that the person was no longer working on that team or had stopped blogging about the product. In a couple of instances there wsa an explanation and a redirect to a team blog that was being updated.

I think Microsoft staff need to think more clearly about the strategy of just randomly creating blogs purporting to offer assistance, developer advice, hints and tips and insights into their products and then just drop them. One had a big ft 3 posts, one to say she was starting, one real post and one to say she was stopping. At the very least plan them out, make them team blogs, etc.

 

Real world lesson:

If you are going to blog about anything - your life, your hobby, your work, some topic you are knowledgable about - then for goodness sake follow some basic principles.

• Know what it is you are blogging about - state it clearly, both to yourself and to your readers.  Preferably use an about page or link off the front that tells people what to expect.
• Use an uncluttered template that allows readers to clearly follow your links to source material, other references, archives, etc.
• Dont use yellow or cyan text - EVER.
• Make sure your RSS or ATOM or XML feed is clearly visible (preferably up the top)
• If you close down your blog or transfer to another site then clearly identify that to your readers, giving them the new url and XML links.

End of Rant.