Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Good afternoon everyone!

This is a super weird post, so it needs an explanation.

I recently discovered that someone had added my blog to a website which people use to keep all the blogs they follow in one place. It’s called Bloglovin’. You may have heard of it. I hadn’t, because apparently it allows users to add people’s blogs to their site without any permission or even a notification to the person who’s blog it is.

My initial reaction was to be quite annoyed by this, as my entire blog was duplicated on their site without my knowledge. In order to make sure noone else ‘claimed’ my blog, I have now had to set up an account with them and link it to my blog here.

However on the other hand I completely understand that people would find a tool like Bloglovin’ useful, because not all blogs are hosted on the same site. So if you wanted to put all the WordPress blogs you follow in with the Blogspot blogs you follow and have them all in the one place, it’s more convenient. I get it, I just think allowing this to be done without asking each blogger if they want to have their work shown on Bloglovin’ is a bit shonky. A lot of what I post is pretty personal stuff, so the feeling that I was not in control of how that information was shared pulled me up a bit short.

If you are a fellow blogger and you’re never heard of this site, I would urge you to have a quick Google and see if you’re on there. I noticed Bloglovin’ in my analytics, that’s how I found out about it.

I’m not 100% clear on whether I think Bloglovin’ is a great idea or a dreadful way for them to potentially make money on ads by using other people’s content without their knowledge. They do state the name of the blog and it links back to your own site when people click on your posts – so technically I don’t think they are breaching any copyright rules – but there’s something a bit cheeky about it nonetheless.

So if you are a Bloglovin’ user already and it’s easier for you to find me on there, go for it – you now have that facility. If you are reading this and have never heard of Bloglovin’ and have no interest in it, please do follow me in the normal way by clicking to follow me by email or via the WordPress widget.

The really annoying thing is that this post has to be in HTML which completely messes with the formatting on my site!

I think that’s enough repetitions of the word ‘blog’ and variations thereof for the moment so I will leave it there – actual running stories coming soon!