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There is a helpful post of Richard MacManus over at Read/Write Web that takes a balanced look at the topic of Bots and Content Creation / Aggregation.

It's a touchy subject for many bloggers who see some automated content creation systems (particularly those that aggregate RSS feeds) as a threat to their own livelihood.

Richard looks at a number of Content Creation systems and ends up taking some middle ground, liking some systems and being very wary of others. It's worth a read as this is a topic we're going to have to grapple with more and more in future. In fact in the past two days I've had emails from 4 different software makers announcing these sorts of packages. In all cases I promptly deleted them as I could see that they were being pretty blatantly marketed to spambloggers.

As Richard notes in his post - systems like these can actually be used in positive and helpful ways (he gives examples) - the problem is that they can also be used to rip off the content of others and to clutter the web. I guess it comes down to the individuals using them to make a call on how they'll approach their content creation.

What do you think about these systems?

Bots and Content Creation / Aggregation report

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Darren Rowse is the founder of ProBlogger.net, a blog about the many ways of adding an income stream to blogs.

Darren owns and writes a variety of blogs including Digital Photography Blog and Camera Phone
Zone. He is also a co-founder of the Breaking News Blog Collective.