There’s a trend I’ve noticed recently in the world of tech blogs that has turned into a pet peeve. This trend is the “I have a secret and you don’t know it” blog posting.

My RSS subscriptions are fairly focused into a few categories, but I see it occuring pretty much with just the .NET development world. Maybe other software/platform ecosystems are the same, but the tech-gadget, poker-fan, photography-hobbyist groups don’t seem to feel the need.

In any case, employees of Microsoft, regional director/author types, and other people who have access to pre-release and pre-CTP efforts are the most guilty. Yeah, http://blogs.msdn.com, I’m looking your direction. Here’s the theme, typified by breathless anticipation and a complete lack of interesting detail or value:

• Boy, I’m tired. I was up all night writing code on a new feature. I can’t talk about it yet, but you guys will love it.
• So I was just talking to [some person] over in the [some product] group and he/she showed me some amazing stuff coming down the pipe. I wish I could talk about it, but it’s too early in the cycle.
• Holy crap. I just got access to an early look at a new product some people I know are building and it’s unreal! I really wish I could tell you more.

So if you’re a blogger who finds yourself in this sort of position and you’re sitting down to write a blog post, here’s my advice… don’t. It’s annoying and you’re really not impressing anyone. Really.

In fact, you’re doing just the opposite as each of the above blog posts amounts to this: I’m an insider/important person and you’re not.

I’ve unsubscribed from a number of blogs lately because of this pet peeve… when you have FeedDemon loaded up with hundreds of subscriptions, you can’t spend time with blog posts that talk about not being able to talk about something.

Thank you for your support.