Bandwidth

Posted on February 26, 2004    Posted by John Scalzi

Bandwidth is going through the roof — not because I’m getting so many more visitors recently (although I am — hi there, new people! Check out the groovy digs!) but because someone on Livejournal linked to a picture here. And the thing is, when you link to a picture on livejournal, it not only gets linked to on your blog, it also gets linked to on every single “friends” blog that has you listed. And either this person who linked the picture has a lot of friends, or people simply cut and pasted the picture into their own livejournals — thus precipitating more “friend” journal hits and so on. And apparently people are just linking to the picture — not back to me personally. And you know. I hate that. If you’re going to thieve my bandwidth, at least do me the courtesy of an actual link, so I get something out of it, like (possibly) new readers.

As a gentle reminder to Livejournalers, I replaced the picture with this:

In addition to letting them know what they’re doing, it’s also a much smaller graphic, memorywise.

To be honest, I don’t really mind people doing direct picture links, but I do wish they’d let me know first so I can say “yeah, that’s okay” or “no, you’re on Livejournal, please just cut and paste the picture into your own space” (or “hell no — you leave my precious pictures alone!!!” Although I don’t usually say that one).

Anyway, if you’re one of the livejournal people who came this way thanks to the graphic, hi there. I’m not actually angry at you. You’re just going to end up costing me money is all. Please, please, please ask for permission to link to my pictures next time. Thanks.