1. Mark Federman on November 2, 2003 3:29 PM writes...

"People who read headlines in newspapers don't read the article, and never send a letter to the editor..."

The analogy is not exact (no analogy is) but apt, I think. The effect of each collaboration tool on our psychology and engagement is different, and depending on the effects we wish to encourage, we choose particular tools. RSS is a useful way of keeping track of what's going on. But, like this blog, the headline in the RSS piqued my interest and here I am - reading and commenting, a statistical sample of one.

Personally, I prefer a partial entry in the RSS feed, not the entire entry, precisely for it's "headline" effect. But then again, I was socialized by that old technology of the press...

2. Lawrence Krubner on November 2, 2003 5:40 PM writes...

Most of the people I know, perhaps 90%, don't know what a weblog is. At every dinner and at every party I'm forced to explain what it is that I do. Of those who do know what a weblog is, I think about the same percent, 90%, don't know what an aggregator is, nor an RSS feed.

My mom, for instance, has read several articles in the New York Times about weblogs, so she now feels like she understands weblogs. She's even begun to read one, talkingpointsmemo.com, after I told her it played a role in toppling Trent Lott (my mom's a liberal). But I can promise you, I can swear to you, I can guarantee to you, my mom does not know what an aggregator is, nor will she ever use a newsreader.

3. Dave Rickey on November 2, 2003 7:47 PM writes...

I'm now one of the (less prolific) authors for the Terra Nova blog. Before that, I was one of the (more prolific) commentors. Terrav Nova may be an oddity, but for it the ongoing dialogue in the comments is an inherent part of the value of the site. Both academics with an interest in virtual worlds and designers actually working on them are finding it a useful meeting ground.

Especially for the designers, active blogging isn't one of the options, MMO designers operate in spurts, one week we're sitting on our thumbs waiting for the programmers to complete a new set of features, the next we're scrambling to test them and direct the content builders on how to use them. This on-again, off-again availability would kill a blog. I can toss off a comment first-draft in a few minutes, an actual post requires house of link-chasing and fact-checking

And after trying to use some of the newsreaders and aggregators, I refuse to believe these are the primary means for most people to read the blogs: They're virtually unusable. Beyond the fact that no newsreader I've found supports reading the comments without special effort (opening a full browser window in most cases), most of them can't deal with anything but a very narrow set of formats. Do anything at all unusual, like include graphics or charts, and they choke and gag. And the aggregators are even worse.

If the blogging revolution requires everyone who participates to be a prolific blogger, we're all screwed. What I see is an example of "intellectual inbreeding", the same people have been saying the same things to each other so often, they can't imagine how anyone could disagree. They don't read anything but other blogs, so the only dialogue they're aware of is that between the blogs.

--Dave

4. Kevin Marks on November 3, 2003 5:59 AM writes...

If Sam believes that, why is he posting in the comments?

5. Abe on November 3, 2003 9:32 AM writes...

I'd love to see some research on all this. I've always believed that aggregators were used by a small geeky minority of the blogsphere. No way to prove it though.

Having just converted a handful of music bloggers to Movable Type I can say that most of them have no clue what RSS even is...

Me personally, I strike a compromise, I hate the actually aggregators, but pump the results of RSS feeds onto my sidebar as html links. Tabs in Firebird manages the massive window popping that ensues when I surf the sidebar. The browser is still the medium of choice, and quite honestly I see the aggregator as staying marginal.

6. Lilia on November 3, 2003 10:55 AM writes...

For me it's interesting to see the difference between the comments above and comments to my own posts inspired by this one:
- http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/02.html#a820
- http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/02.html#a821

I guess many (may be most) of my readers use news aggregators, find them useful and don't even read weblogs without RSS feeds. These are puzzling differences for me...

I wonder if it's something to do with reasons for reading weblogs, personal preferences or specific clusters of bloggers/social processes. For example, if your friend uses LiveJournal you are likely to use it as well OR if others in your professional circles (let's say "edublogs") use new aggregator you are likely to use it as well.

7. Bill Brandon on November 4, 2003 6:11 PM writes...

You know it's not like everyone uses a pure strategy, either. I read Lilia's Mathemagenic weblog through an aggregator. I got here by clicking on a link in one of her entries that came via aggregator, so technically, I am now reading *this* weblog through a browser.

Comments are another issue, since the advent of comment spam. I used to have comments enabled in my weblog. Then I got some spam in the comments (entered manually by people, allegedly professional colleagues, who should have known better). Since I don't have the benefit of having my own server -- my weblog is hosted at Userland -- the only way to get rid of the comments and to prevent the autospammers from exploiting my weblog was to turn the comments off. I suspect I am not the only weblog publisher who has adopted that method. (What I really want is software that will set a spammer's hair on fire in retribution.)

8. Hans Gerwitz on November 6, 2003 10:12 PM writes...

On aggregators, I use one to increase my "reverse" sphere of influence by orders of magnitude. This ability is *not* because of the single-window UI or the collapsing of entries to headlines for scanning. Rather, the key is being able to track which entries I have investigated. Imagine how unmanageable email would become if mail clients didn't have a "read" flag.

I have found that I am more likely to visit an entry via a browser if it contains some intro content, a headline alone is rarely enough to entice. Whether or not an entry contains the full content doesn't seem to matter, precisely because I am interested in the comments and trackbacks.

It would be ideal for my reading habits if entries included lists of comments, perhaps with the first few lines. I am presently frustrated by the difficulty of tracking conversations. After posting this, for example, I am unlikely to return and continue participating unless I place this entry's permalink into my "watch this" bookmark folder, which is becoming so cluttered as to be useless.

9. Trudy W. Schuett on November 7, 2003 6:31 AM writes...

People are still having trouble understanding blogs, and their varied uses. Because so many of them are people's daily diaries, what I'm getting is that blogs are "by definition" nothing more than personal venting. I've got an article at Writer Online that attempts to explain some of that:
http://www.writeronline.us/guest/schuett-11-3-03.htm

One thing I've noticed though, is that there are bloghosting sites that don't even supply an RSS feed. So this tells me the general misunderstanding of blogs goes far deeper than many people (who are serious about blogs) realize. There is still a lot of educating that needs to be done!