I’m often asked about whether it’s necessary to work with bloggers when you create a topic hub.  The strict answer is that likely it’s not an issue if you abide by certain use principles.  However, the practical answer is that it’s always better to work with bloggers and other content sources rather than just taking their content without any outreach.

I just saw a post Open letter to trainingspotting.com.  This post shows the back lash of not working with bloggers:

Dear Sir,

I have recently discovered that your website (trainingspotting.com) is using my RSS feed to make it look as if I’m writing for you.

[...]

Please be aware that I have never been approached by any member of the trainingspotting.com team and I have not given permission for my posts to be used in this way.

[...]

The way you work is diametrically opposed to http://www.elearninglearning.com/, who use RSS to collect posts from the elearning community, but only display a small part of the post, with direct links back to the originator’s site to read more and to comment.

[...]

Please could you either:

1. Remove my posts from your website

   Or

2. Make it clear that these are copies of my posts, remove the ability to make comments against them, and provide a link back to the original post

Yours,

Mark Berthelemy

Mark happens to be a great participant in the eLearning Learning topic hub.  Likely if he had been approached and if they had treated his content appropriately, then it would have been a different result.

It’s still not definitive.  But it is still seems better to work with bloggers.