There's a blogging life cycle that most of the bloggers are aware of. You write your first blog and feel on top of the world hoping for the world to check it. You use more "word of mouth" marketing sharing it with your family and friends again hoping for them to read and encourage you. It's natural if you do. It's also natural if you don't.
Then comes a phase when you write more often. The expectation you had from your family and friends slowly diminish and you concentrate on reading blogs from around the world. You make friends. Then its your blogging friends who encourage / criticize / share their point of view on the topics you've blogged on. A new social world altogether!
Then comes the phase of 'anonymous' comments. Now when you comment, you have the option to hide your identity. Why do people do it? Maybe they know you and don't want you to judge them based on their comments. Could be. The comment could be a criticism, it could be a point which is not acceptable in our society. Or simply they don't want you to know that they read your blog. We all can understand these reasons. Just as I am entitled to my opinion and decisions, they are entitled to theirs. I am fine with it. But this is what I am not fine with -
Now, technically I don't know what I did in the recent past to invite a lot of 'anonymous' comments. I have this habit of doing some R&D on my blog. Changing the HTML code for some reason and so on. If you carefully read and understand the "anonymous" comments, you will realize 2 things:
- These are generic comments and have nothing to do with the post whatsoever!
- They are also promoting their website. Possibly for more hits.
I know they are spams. Thankfully all blogging platforms have a moderate comments section which allows you to delete these 'anonymous' comments. Why am I ranting about the these comments? Because I just saw I have some genuine comments from my blogging friends that are yet to be approved! And I missed it thanks to the spammers. Damn you spammers! Just for a few more cents you are destroying the internet world.
On a lighter side, enlarge the image above and read the 3rd comment. It says "I am sure this article has touched all the internet people, its really really nice article on building up new blog". And my post was on Bollywood movies! If this isn't good enough I also have a Chinese comment yet to be approved.
damn thing has gone crazy recently... i get 1-2 every day.. some escape the damn spam folders and get published.
ReplyDeleteMany of the spams enter the "spam" section thankfully. But there are some that successfully avoid spam folder. And its increasing everyday.
DeleteOh yes, I keep receiving these kind of Anonymous comments. Thank god these are spam ones, because sometimes you don't to know what to reply to these comments. As you have said, they are totally out of sync with the blog posts & sometimes it's hilarious to read these comments...:)
ReplyDeleteTrue Prashanth. It's funny to read the comments when we know it has nothing to do with the post.. Interesting to know that I am not the only one with this issue. Guess every one of us is facing the same problem..
DeleteI'm new to this blog :)!
ReplyDeleteThe topic of this post comes at the right time for me.In fact,I had so much spam comming up recently that at one point I decided to use word verification for my comments.I know this can be a pain for the one who wants to comment,but it really has stopped the unwanted trash comments...
Greetings :)!
Thanks Jasmina for the visit. I have selected the option of moderating comments before publishing them. That way spam is avoided.. But the moderation becomes a pain.. :)
DeleteSo your fan following is on an increase Binu:)
ReplyDeleteSir, i guess the "spam" following is increasing! :D
DeleteThis is the only reason i opted for CAPTCHA.!
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense Red..
DeleteYeah, I read, sorry, saw that comment in alien language. Binu, I get atleast 5 every day and there was one who used to post and I used to delete ( somehow he/she broke the spam block). In the last 2-3 comments, he wrote I'll check and see why my comment is not approved by the admin. Can you believe that? I hate spammers.
ReplyDeleteNow that's a new thing I heard Saru. For me, the spam guys never follow up on their comments. That is bad..
DeleteI guess all this is done to improve the page ranking and thereby get more hits which translates to more money.. Irritating for us, indeed..
ReplyDeleteThank you doctor for visiting my blog. Wait a minute, I hope this is not a spam.. :D
ReplyDeletehahahah Superb we are all hit by such comments :D and they are on some older post which you would have long forgotten so even I endup sweeping comments most of the times :D
ReplyDeleteVery well written Binu :D
BTW will you dare to translate the chinese comment ROFL :D
I also affected this "anonymous"
ReplyDeleteI removed comment as anonymous facility from comment section of my blog
good post
thanks
I have to use 'Moderation' option only because of these SPAM comments - 10 to 15 every day. Is it a machine generated program or someone in the world has lot of time (and obviously lot of money to sit idle!) to write this! What happiness s/he might me getting in this - I wonder!!
ReplyDeleteTrue that, Binu! Spam comments are on the rise like never before. Wonder what's wrong with the google filters?!
ReplyDeleteGoogle filters have gone for a toss!!
DeleteIf you ask me, it all depends on the content of the post, I saw, on many occasions just links to other web sites or a comment that looks more like a sequence of vowels and consonants in no apparent order, it was crystal clear they were spamming. But if one person gives you a good quality post, it is involved in the discussion thread and actually writes something related to the main post, then it really is no big deal. Truth be told, just posting your link like that and not offering something in return is just a cheap way of promoting a web site, I even bet it`s not a high ranked page anyway.
ReplyDeleteYou've hit the nail! Even I believe it's all about page ranking.. More back-links, better pagerank..
Deletemy comment section used to be flooded with anonymous messages too mentioning some spa facility! I cancelled the option which lets anonymous people comment on my blog and to some extent the problem has come down. At one point of time i had a genuine reader commenting under the anonymous identity too. Have no idea why he/ she would do that though.
ReplyDeleteHehe.. It gets interesting when an annonymous comment appears with a genuine feedback.. I wonder if the guy knows you personally.. :)
ReplyDelete