Monday, April 05, 2004
I Kinja Know What Blogs You're Reading, Kinja Tell What Blogs I'm Reading? As far as I'm concerned the hottest thing about Nick Denton's bid to actually own all of the blogosphere, Kinja, is the way it reveals who is reading my blog in the referrer logs. If, say, the drunk Bush daughter were to throw ManhattanTransfer up on her kinja list and click through a link, and my referrer log will show something like this: www.kinja.com/user/JennaBush.
Of course, you don't have to set-up your Kinja account with a identity revealing username. I'm sure you can still sign up with Kinja as mixoplik if you want. But many people have not realised that Kinja gives away their identity, and haven't taken the precaution of registering with a psuedonym (especially if they are already blogging under a psuedonym).
Why would anyone care that their Kinja idenitity is revealed to the bloggers they're monitoring? For one thing, it strips away one level of anonymity from the blogosphere, and can even lead to a strange asymetry of information. You might not know the identity of the blogger writing your favorite blog, but if you register your Kinja account under your real name, the psuedonymous blogger knows yours.
For another, there's this neat trick. Once you've got someone's kinja name, you can click through the link to their account, and see what other blogs they are monitoring. Is someone keeping up on the latest Fleshbot posts? Or spending their time reading Instapundit? Well, now you know. (This little trick is easily negated by going into the "My Account" section and marking your Kinja account private. Not many users, however, seem to have caught on to this. Or maybe they don't care who sees what they see.)
On the other hand, it's a nice way to show your friends that you've put their blogs on your Kinja list.
Of course, you don't have to set-up your Kinja account with a identity revealing username. I'm sure you can still sign up with Kinja as mixoplik if you want. But many people have not realised that Kinja gives away their identity, and haven't taken the precaution of registering with a psuedonym (especially if they are already blogging under a psuedonym).
Why would anyone care that their Kinja idenitity is revealed to the bloggers they're monitoring? For one thing, it strips away one level of anonymity from the blogosphere, and can even lead to a strange asymetry of information. You might not know the identity of the blogger writing your favorite blog, but if you register your Kinja account under your real name, the psuedonymous blogger knows yours.
For another, there's this neat trick. Once you've got someone's kinja name, you can click through the link to their account, and see what other blogs they are monitoring. Is someone keeping up on the latest Fleshbot posts? Or spending their time reading Instapundit? Well, now you know. (This little trick is easily negated by going into the "My Account" section and marking your Kinja account private. Not many users, however, seem to have caught on to this. Or maybe they don't care who sees what they see.)
On the other hand, it's a nice way to show your friends that you've put their blogs on your Kinja list.
