Terms of Service agreements don’t apply to most blogs.

This morning I was involved in a short discussion about Terms of Service (TOS) and started thinking about how they apply to most blogs. How often do you read the TOS of sites that you don’t register for? In my case, the answer is almost never. I don’t remember the last time I’ve read a TOS policy on a blog.

So imagine my surprise when a blogger actually had a Terms of Service policy and kept track of who was and wasn’t following it like Paul did recently. He then used those who didn’t follow the policy as an example of people not reading Terms of Service policies. Yeah, just deeplinked him again violating this policy.

Relax, he wasn’t serious. He was trying to make a statement about a company that has an anti-deeplinking policy. Paul didn’t really intend to have a policy on his blog that discouraged deeplinking, he just wanted to show that others if they even read it, wouldn’t follow it. Of course they wouldn’t read a policy like this on a blog. Now if he had a site that involved registration/login and did that there I think his experiment results would have been different.

When will it be time to add a TOS?
Five months from now this blog will be four years old. We’ve never had a TOS at Hmm and have seen no need to add one because we don’t really have a formal registration function. I’ve encouraged interested writers to register using the blog software and submit posts before but never really promoted it beyond a post or two. Unsurprisingly, the idea never really went anywhere and don’t even think registration is allowed any longer (didn’t check before making this post).

Perhaps we will add some sort of community function before or after our four year blog anniversary but until we do I see no reason to create a TOS. The TOS is useful primarily for sites that actually offer site registration related and community-oriented services.

What are we signing up for and what are the terms of our service at a blog with no registration/login function? In a blog it’s either there and updated or not. You get the RSS feed or you read it in your browser, but where is the community registration/login? The only service we have here is whether the blog is up and updated or down and not updated. That’s a real easy TOS agreement to write and I could do it in two sentences:

If you visit and the site is up, you are free to read and agree or disagree and leave a comment so long as you follow our comment policy. If the site is down please check back a little later because we’re probably making changes to improve the site in some interesting way.

There are readers and RSS subscribers, sure, there’s definitely a community feel. It would be silly for me to suggest that there is no community at all at blogs like this one — and I’m not — but when you are registered for something it feels differently, doesn’t it? What do you think? Terms of service are most applicable for sites where people need to register, login and use a service of some kind.

Then again, some people use TOS to define what others can do at their sites, including whether or not images can be hotlinked or deeplinking is allowed by other publishers. Since copyright covers a lot of this including in TOS could be overkill. Pictured to the right above is Google’s Terms of Service which definitely makes sense for them, despite the fact you can make Google searches without signing up for anything.

I don’t hotlink images without permission and try to do so rarely even with permission. I’m unsure of the quality and performance of other site’s hosting companies while I know what our own hosting situation and performance is like. Even some very big sites overextend themselves with ‘hey link to us stuff’ and then the images or services end up serving broken content or slowing down the sourcing site (in the case of Javascript includes). That’s not the type of content and experience I want to share here. Doesn’t mean this site won’t be down sometimes too (it has and will be sometimes in the future), but our biggest enemy as of this writing is comment and trackback spambots, not the activity of readers.

Having a TOS that prohibits these comment/trackback bots wouldn’t stop them from slamming this blog. Need to deal with that, and trying to do so, programmatically. The best way, frankly.

I regularly read the terms of service for sites I register for and the EULA of software I download and use and have been turned away after reading some of these terms.

Having a TOS just to have one seems pretty silly to me. Just like having a formal comment policy when your blog doesn’t receive many comments. We didn’t add a comment policy until we actually needed one (thousands of comments and hundreds of different commenters) and yet I see some blogs with lengthy comment policies and no comments in sight. Don’t create policies and procedures and legal documents until it’s necessary to do so. They tend to run readers off more than help encourage more of them to take part in what you’re doing.

Some might call this being more professional having all these policies and procedures but for something like a blog where you are trying to get more personal with the audience … why?

Will there ever be a community feature at Hmm?
There hasn’t been any need to create a community feature that requires an official registration login here to date. There is currently no effort to collect email addresses and build a mailing list. Yes, I know there is a subscribe to the RSS feed by email feature using the third party service Feedblitz and any time you leave a comment here it requires an email address, but those aren’t used for anything other than the stated purposes.

I’ve pondered doing a newsletter but then what would the newsletter do? What would it offer for readers that they can’t get here already in the RSS? Why would anybody want to subscribe?

One idea would be to offer subscribers access to unpublished material. Before you think that something unpublished always or even usually means the crap we don’t or won’t publish, then think again. There are some posts I’m really proud of that didn’t get published here for several reasons. Some of those reasons might intrigue readers and present an opportunity for publication elsewhere. I’ve been thinking about this awhile and the thought continues to be attractive and not go away. Given enough time with an idea that doesn’t go away, I’ll usually act upon it.

I’ve written before about doing this at another intentionally similar domain called nakedyougohmm.com which is registered but isn’t launched (yet?). I’m not a big fan of more email so a newsletter by email only doesn’t appeal to me in the way another website with content that wasn’t offered here would. The other thing I’ve mentioned about the nakedyougohmm site is that it would be a place to allow me to talk about more adult-oriented subjects in much greater depth that interest me. Just remember that the word “naked” in the domain doesn’t necessarily mean porn either. It also doesn’t mean it will be a place where I’ll be getting naked.

(Although just to shock some readers I wouldn’t completely rule that possibility out)

Seriously, I doubt anybody wants to see me naked LOL.

Now what if people want to subscribe to the non-adult unpublished Hmm posts but would rather not read any X-rated type posts? With new services like Yahoo Pipes that allow mixing and mashing RSS feeds, I think it would be easier to allow readers this type of functionality and power but I’d have to review their TOS to see if they would allow use of their program at a primarily adult site.

Last week, for those interested, I covered Yahoo Pipes over at our group blog. I’m intrigued by the possibilities of Pipes for creating individually customized RSS feeds from single (or multiple) publications. I would like to work on something Pipes oriented for here too, so keep your eye on the Hmm Labs.

Speaking of not even in the Hmm Labs I’ve been working on a few things in the background that would require some sort of registration/login, but that would be for additional features and functionality beyond what is already offered here. I love the idea that people can stop by and read what they are most interested in here using their favorite RSS reader. You can subscribe or unsubscribe the RSS feed(s) any time you want. Reader power all the way.

Wait for the TOS stuff. There will be times and places that Terms of Service policies make perfect sense. Blogs? In most cases no.

2006 was a good year and it’s time for me to lay down some goals, resolutions and changes this new year.

1. Goodbye existing RSS feeds, hello new RSS feeds
I’ve completely reset my warm, comfortable RSS reading list. All day long, in fact, I kept checking to see new posts … that were no longer there.

Since March 20 2006, I averaged following 185 RSS feeds and personally skimmed through over 150,000 posts marking 14,717 as ‘publish’ed. In a new directory and database I installed a fresh reBlog install for 2007 and am now looking at this:

I’ll be resubscribing to some of the 180+ feeds I was subscribed to in 2006, but I’m going to try my best to add primarily new voices, new feeds and new sources to my daily reading list. I also reset the Hmm front page blogroll.

Nothing against the many sources I enjoyed in 2006, but I’m not the kind of guy who likes staying in comfort zones and coasting along for an extended period of time. I like to keep doing new and different things, experimenting and exploring. You’re welcome to make your case for why I should resubscribe in 2007 below either by comment or trackback. Tell me what you will be doing differently in 2007? What will be new about you/your site? If the answer is nothing, then this is your opportunity to make a post like the one I’m making here and share.

Along the left hand side of the homepage (location subject to change) you’ll see my OPML file for 2006 and 2007. As of this writing 2007 I have only two subscriptions, one for here so I can monitor how the feed looks and the other is the next item I’ll be discussing.

I’m also working on a public shared reading list experiment that you can get involved with (keep reading for clues) and help influence what I post about here at Hmm in 2007. This means even if I’m not subscribed to your blog, there will be a familiar and easy way for you to submit posts you’d like me to skim/read.

2. Virtual world (MMO / MMORPG) focus changes
In January of 2006 myself and several others started a group blog called VTOR (Virtual TO Reality) to cover the virtual world landscape. We chose to use the new freehosting service from the people behind Blogexplosion called Blogcharm. Within days of launching the service, unfortunately, the BE owners announced they were selling the entire service and from there Blogcharm never really got much attention and the service went from new to bad to miserable.

It turned out to be a horrible move starting our blog at Blogcharm, especially over the last 60 days when the hosting has had numerous site outages, so we jumped to our own server. The VTOReality site migration is now complete and the new group blog is available at vtoreality.com on a server that is dramatically faster. We’re hosting on one of our dedicated servers. The RSS feed was being served by Feedburner so existing subscribers don’t need to update their links.

I’m looking forward to some exciting developments in virtual lands in 2007 and hope to be contributing even more than in 2006. I started out 2006 very involved and after summer things kind of tapered off. I downsized my virtual land holdings in Second Life so I’ll be starting lean and mean in 2007.

3. Removed sharing links
I’ve removed the digg, del.icio.us and sphere links at the bottom of each post. While I considered these convenient and useful for readers in 2006, those who use these services can use bookmarklets from these services if they want. These links just seem redundant to me any more. Maybe I’ll change back to thinking it was a good idea, but they’re gone for now.

4. Hmmcast — video or audio — five days a week
Vlogging here I come!

One of my 2007 goals is to publish at least one originally created video or podcast every weekday, save for holidays. They won’t necessarily all be related just like text posts here. Some might be short clips, others longer with higher production value. Expect screencasts, one on one commentary and more. This starts today and now below (on a holiday too, oops):

That video may be more of a strange vignette, but my experimenting and exploration will come into some sort of regular production (or quit after a serious concerted effort). Yeah, guess I’m saying the Hmmcast will be a regular production, which is what I alluded to in my last post and have wanted to do for quite some time now.

This will be replacing the bi-monthly most hmm-worthy posts. I liked the concept but it’s kind of out of gas in the current format and want to try something different.

5. Back in Black Labs
Many of the new experiments we’re working on related in some way to Hmm will be listed in a new labs.makeyougohmm.com. You can poke around there now and see some of what’s happening behind the scenes, away from the RSS feed and website. This isn’t some promotional thing, it’s a place for us to play mad scientist together and check out stuff. You will be a part of this, if you want to be.

I probably won’t write posts about all these lab experiments, but you’ll note a new category called “labs” which is bound to follow some of these experiments. One of the things I want to do a better job at in 2007 is making things being worked on and experimented with behind the scenes a little more publically accessible. Also will allow me to get feedback from you about ideas you might think would be cool more fully developed for here or related sites.

6. ???
This list could go on but I’m going to leave it there for now. Tease, tease. Hopefully you’ve noticed most of these personal and site goals lean towards creating more original content. I’m not planning on getting too far removed from commenting on news and what other people are saying/doing, what’s happening in tech, and ultimately things that make me and hopefully you go hmm, but I do want to focus more on producing and publishing a greater amount of original content in 2007 than in prior years, if that’s even possible with my frenetic schedule. We’ll find out in 12 months, won’t we?

Look around the site, leave comments and if you like, get involved here in the many other creative ways to be available throughout 2007. Thank you for reading and supporting this site with your time and energy. It’s contagious.