A cou­ple of new things to tell you about today.

First off, I’m try­ing a new exper­i­ment. I’ve decided to close and remove com­ments on this blog. Just to see what hap­pens. Why? Here’s the thing…

When I post a new blog post, it will be cross­posted to a few social net­works. Some, by design with the help of a few tools and plu­g­ins. Oth­ers, by sub­scribers and read­ers who retweet, reblog, or track­back to my posts.

What I’ve noticed is, on these social net­works — Twit­ter, Face­book, Friend­Feed, Digg, and now with the new Google Buzz — my posts seem to incite dis­cus­sions on these loca­tions. Dis­cus­sions I love to par­tic­i­pate in, too, when I have a chance.

I want to har­ness that social media power and divest myself of the con­stant mod­er­a­tion of this blog. I feel that, since there are so many dis­cus­sions tak­ing place else­where, why not take advan­tage of social media and bring the dis­cus­sions to the pub­lic instead?

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Effec­tive imme­di­ately, I’m insti­tut­ing a new com­ment pol­icy for this blog. Before I explain it to you (it’s really sim­ple as there are only three rules), let me give you the rea­son why.

I’m see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of com­ment spam lately. Not the usual, software-​​driven kind — Akismet and Dis­qus do a won­der­ful job to keep those at bay. But the ones that look, on the sur­face, as legit­i­mate comments.

Legit­i­mate, they are not.

They are faux com­ments mask­ing as real ones for the express pur­pose of siphon­ing traf­fic. Called “friendly com­ment spam,” they are typ­i­cally sim­ple, often just a sen­tence or two, and most of them are generic, irrel­e­vant, and com­pli­men­tary in nature.

Believe me, I love praise like most peo­ple. But just say­ing “nice blog” (or “nice arti­cle,” “nice post,” “good job,” “love this post,” etc) does not con­sti­tute a com­ment. They are not con­tribut­ing any­thing to the con­ver­sa­tion, or any­thing of value to my readers.

I talked about this on Twit­ter and on Face­book, and while most peo­ple agreed with me, some were opposed. One per­son said that many of these com­men­ta­tors are aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and that I should be grate­ful for such a problem.

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It’s New Year’s Eve, so I wanted to take a moment to wish you all a Happy New Year. Thanks for your con­tin­ued read­er­ship and sup­port in 2008. Your return vis­its, your com­ments, and your sub­scriber­ship are greatly appreciated.

New Year’s is a time when we make res­o­lu­tions. But res­o­lu­tions are often bro­ken. Instead, I pre­fer to set goals, with the sole res­o­lu­tion to meet them. What are my goals for 2009? It all boils down to three sim­ple words…

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I’ve done a cou­ple of things to my blog, mostly “behind the scenes,” that I want to share with you.

Some well-​​known mar­keters have closed their com­ments on their blogs. The pri­mary and most impor­tant rea­son is to deal with the plethora of com­ment spam. If you wanted to com­ment on any of their posts, you’d have to do it on your own blog by post­ing an arti­cle and link­ing back to it.

Since most blogs sup­port it, your link will auto­mat­i­cally cre­ate a track­back on the post, which will be listed in the com­ments area. But the won­der­ful byprod­uct of this is that it increases back­links (i.e., link pop­u­lar­ity) to their blogs.

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