Do you have BlogRush?

Turns out, widgets such as Blogrush might compromise the security of your blog. (yes, you heard that right). Not only that, they get TONS of traffic through the blog owners, AND spread at the expense of the blog owners.

Bottom line is, they're BAD for your blog! But don't take my word for it, the guru's at Wordpress (which I highly respect) have deemed Blogrush and all similar widgets an unnecessary risk and since then they have BANNED them from Wordpress.COM. (Users on Wordpress.Org, the downloadable open-source version may still be able to use such plug-ins)

The way blogrush works is by capitalizing on the user's traffic and 'face time' with the audience to present them with their own idea of what's going on. As in, what's best to present to everyone!

Your chances of getting your links up on blogrush? 1x [the number of blogrush subscribers]. They're chance of showing on your blog 100% of all your hits!

As the number of subscribers grow, your chances get slimmer, and slimmer. That's the worst thing you can do for your business.

By the way, the issues don't stop at blogrush, other widgets like MyBlogLog, Amazon shopping/wish list, Facebook widgets, and many others all suffer from the same issues; here's a list of them:

1. Security
   These widgets have access to everything you run on your site, and everyONE who access it. They have the option to explode pop-ups in visitor's faces or redirect them to pornographic sites. This was the case with WebStats4U (read my article about them here)
2. Privacy
   Exposing your patterns, user patters and many other information. These widgest can, (and often will) story this information and be able to track the user across all the sites that have their widgets. Pretty scary if you ask me
3. Performance
   The performance is your whole site will be dependant on the performance of this widget, the page will not be done loading until the widget is done loading. A badly designed widget might take too long, and download too much to the user's widow that it might cause them to lose interest in your site and leave
4. Visual skinnability
   The way these widgets look is usually very hard to modify
5. Compatibility
   They don't work in all browsers

Now, I would like to include this interview I had with famous blogger, web developer and designer: Bakkouz, on his thoughts and ideas on Blogrush. He was one of the very first adopters:

• Q: As an expert, and someone who tried blogrush, What do you think of blogrush?
  A: it could have been successful. the concept was good but the implementation was awful, and i did not deliver the results it promised
  
• Q: What's your advice for young bloggers who are trying to establish a steady traffic to their blog?
  A: well first of all, consistency is key, you need to keep on posting stuff, new shit, and unless he/she is establishing a blog in a certain niche, variation in topics is always a good thing ya3ni
  
• Q: Why did you remove blogrush?
  A: like i said, it just did not deliver, it was over-hyped and turned out to be a waste of time.
  
• Q: How much traffic did blogrush generate to your blog (in percentage)
  A: oh i dunno i don't remember, it was very little traffic though, very minimal
  
• Q: What could be a better use for the space that blogrush occupied on your blog?
  A: instead of blogrush? anything.
  
  Q: What about ads?
  A: ads maybe, though in case of ads placement is important but yes, or any other widget
  
• Q: Anything you would like to say to the audience?
  A: yes, always wear sun screen.

Valuable advice indeed

So there you have it!

I will take this opportunity and recommend something. If you're a member of an Aggregator community. Support it, add their feed to your blog and help everyone generate higher ranks and more traffic.

Oh, and always wear, sunscreen!