Bloggers Beware
One thing I've noticed occasionally but never been able to conclusively prove:
If you are providing a RSS feed, and someone connects Google Reader to that feed, then posts that get read by the Google Reader reader don't get removed if you delete them.
That's a lot of words, perhaps we can use more to explain this simply:
Suppose you have a 'blog with a RSS service.
And suppose a potential reader comes along and puts that RSS service into their Google Reader (like I do).
Now suppose you write, and publish a post, which gets put into your RSS feed.
Now the Google Reader process comes around at some interval calculated from both your historical post frequency and the number of readers using it in Google Reader. It reads the RSS feed, and includes your post in it.
NOW suppose you think better of your post, and remove it for whatever reason.
The catch is that the post, as it existed in the RSS feed, is still available to Google Reader users.
To me, this leads to some odd legal questions. For example, liability. If you libel someone in a post, then remove it, but Google still has the offending post, who is liable for the libel?
Don't know the answer.