Jeneane at ALLIED went on a bit of a rant earlier about you LAZY AGGREGATOR PEOPLE. She makes a very good point. RSS and ATOM have created a very easy way to read other people’s blogs/sites. The problem is that the aggregators that you pull those from make it even easier to never go to the site. Which means that those that only read through their aggregators will never leave any feedback unless you really, really hit a nerve with them.
Those of us that have personal blogs like this one are doomed to have a very limited bit of feedback. Not because we don’t deserve it or don’t want it. But because we just don’t hit the nerve hard enough. Take a look at your favorite political blog(I know you have one, mine is sayanything) and look at the amount of feedback that the author receives. Why? Because politics hits a nerve with everyone. Everyone has an issue with it and there are always two sides. Oh, and everyone always believes they are the ones who are correct.
Jeneane believes that we need to go back to the blogroll system.
What’s the matter with us? We have to get out and WALK the blog neighborhood. Everyone reading this post, please make sure that you have a blogroll. Sure, I can’t tell you what to do, but Blogrolls are the antidote to RSS and aggregators. Bring back our conversation nodes, our watering holes, our double wides. Bring back our summer-time Christmas lights and nativity scenes.
Please. I am not writing posts for you to read; I AM TALKING TO YOU.
I couldn’t agree more, except I’m addicted to my bloglines feeds. The difference is that if I find a post that I like, I open it up on the site. I may not always leave feedback, but in most cases I’ll do a post like this and link it back which is almost as good as direct feedback. So, everyone beef up your blogrolls and help us discover your favorites. Let’s take a look and see who’s talking to us.
Maybe we need to start looking into selective RSS shutoff? A way to shutoff RSS to just one post. Something like a “{RSSoff}{/RSSoff}” tag system. Or a “{RSS}{/RSS}” system to turn it on for the posts we want on. Create a content system that doesn’t give people the ability to not visit once in a while.
Technorati Tags: feedback, sessum, aggregator, bloglines
About Shane Ede
So you mean to tell me – that after telling me about bloglines and helping me find some good feeds, that you want me to ditch it and go back to just google homepage?
No thank you sir. Now I know that wasn’t exactly the point. However I think the point missed here is this: Even when directly visiting a site (ie at the page and not the feed) people, myself often included, do not leave a comment anyways unless a “nerve is hit.”
I LOVE the idea of being able to turn RSS off for specific posts. Lots of times, people won’t subscribe to you (Scoble for example) if you only use partial feeds. And lots of my stuff, I don’t blame them for–for news and updates, aggregators are great. But sometimes, when we publish a larger essay or long piece or something very intense(ive), it would be cool to be able to give the reader a tickler and say, come see me for more.
cool!