blog remora, n., blahg reh-MOH-rah: One who attempts to increase the popularity of her or his own blog, or avoid the labour of blogging, by quoting the comments of more established bloggers.
e.g. – “Heyz, everyone. I’m kinda hung over after last night’s MeetUp, so if nobody minds, I’ll just be a blog remora today. OK – Scoble has something interesting to say…”
e.g. 2 – “Technorati shows there isn’t a lot of actual discussion of the issue: just the original post at Corante, and a whole bunch of blog remoras chiming in.”
Originated/inspired by Michael Powell of freethought.ca in this post quoting Paul Wells, in which, paradoxically, coining the term disqualifies him from having it apply to him:
I usually don’t like just referring to other blogs in posts, especially when I suspect it is one that most people read anyway. Makes me feel like I am just playing remora to the good-post-shark.
Not to be confused with blog remorse, the regret a blogger feels over an ill-thought-out post or comment, especially one that cannot now be edited.
Indeed. In fact, this is the primary reason blogs conform to Theodore Sturgeon’s adage that 99 per cent of everything is crap. What’s the point of a blog that merely echoes other blogs? What I want is a unique perspective on something about which I am already aware, or, if I’m really lucky, a piece of news that hasn’t already found its way onto the MSM.
I’m afraid the signal-to-noise ration in the blogosphere is still dismally low, and is now likely to get higher in the foreseeable future, if this remora trend is any indication.
Two notes.
One, a little retroactive due diligence (why, yes, that is an oxymoron): Google has two previous and distinct usages of “blog remora”, dating from 2002 and 2003, but neither seems to have caught on. (One was basically as a synonym for “online stalker”, and the other was to describe someone who relies on other blogs to post their writing.)
Two, remoras have their uses in the great blog food chain. Let’s divide them into two broad groups: false remoras, who quote more popular blogs but not as a way of improving their own search rankings, and actual remoras, who are mainly doing it to score with Google or Technorati. The distinction can be one of intention or emphasis, depending on the specimen under review.
False remoras include beginners who are just getting used to the culture and technology of blogging. For whatever reason — they’re still finding their own voice, someone told them they should post every day no matter what, they’re afraid of saying anything that isn’t backed up by an authoritative (or at least popular) voice — they don’t have a lot to say yet except “ditto.” But they’re learning skills and gaining confidence. Soon many of them will be swimming on their own and helping to make the blogospheriverse more than just an echo chamber.
Then there are those who add value with their citations, such as a blog that finds content you otherwise might not have discovered. (Zombies versus duct-tape knights, for example.) Or someone who has a humorous take on someone else’s comment. Or someone who can synergize two posts from different blogs. Value-added is how beginners can move up a notch in blog phylogeny.
True remoras… well, at least they do just a little to drive up the search engine rankings of the good-post sharks. And one interesting thing about blogs and search engines: the noise often helps draw attention to the signal. There’s a reason they call it “buzz”…
Actually, to a scientist, noise can never draw attention to a signal. The one is the opposite of the other. More noise means the signal is harder to find. So I’m afraid that analogy just doesn’t work.