I have a question regarding non-original content on multiple sites. I'm working for a client that's company has a personalized social network for it's fans (completely custom, built from the ground up - not like kickapps, or the other social network dev platforms). Anyway the network is fairly active - at least a couple thousand users - and each one of these sites is given a subdomain.
Each of these subdomains can be given a custom URL if purchased - but essentially it's much like creating a blogger or wordpress. Each URL is basically "http://FanUsername.BrandName.c0m/"
Now the dev had the genius idea of publishing all "corporate/company" blog posts on everyone of these subdomains as well. When first learning of this, I told them it was a terrible idea - and that it may even penalize the main blog. After more research - it looks like this may not be the case? I still think they should just link back to the main blog and discontinue publishing these posts on all of these additional subdomains (and for those that purchased domain names - unique websites).
What do you guys think? Should they only include an RSS feed of links back to the main blog? Should they just link directly back to the blog? Or should they offer shortened versions of each blog post - ala links + meta description + Read More...? Or lastly, should they just keep as is?
Thanks for the help