For a while now I've been puzzled and puzzling over that "Web 2.0" slogan. Just what is the Web 2.0 that the gurus keep talking about? How does it differ from what we've had these last 10-15 years? The hardware is the same - pretty much, though it would have been nice in the 90s to have had broadband and wireless for the last few miles and feet like we often do today! (I'm assuming that Web 2.0 does not mean the new high speed Internet that is providing research institutions with much higher data rates, but refers to some quantum leap in the experience that "ordinary people" have with the web.)
On the 'plane from LA to Chicago, back on Friday, I listened to a really good BBC interview with Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly publishing) first in the cut down Go Digital programme format, and then in the "full version" they also podcast. Web 2.0 - according to Tim O'R - is all about taking and responding to user input and data. The Web 1.0 version of this is why - new kid with no pedigree - Amazon beat - established bookseller - Barnes and Noble. It explains the rise of Google - who understood that a useful search engine is not about indexing content like Yahoo or AltaVista (remember them) had done, but about spotting what people, web users, recognize as meaningful links (Page Rank).
It also explains the flogging phenomenon - build on user data and input - and so the importance of RSI and so why around the coffee stations of the Internet RSI (and pitchstone, RSI for MP3 files) are all the buzz.
But does it?
For blogs at least RSI works to deliver me the new posts from the blogs I like into my feed reader, so I read them together, in categories that make sense to me. So each time I log on I get the option to read the new posts from the Bibliobloggers, or the Emergent Church, or the tech's that I have found and like. No more trudging round a list of bookmark to see if Mark, or Paul, or Jim (always) have a new post, if they have it's there in my reader, waiting for me.
Which is great for the blog consumer, less work, less time. It's great for the blog author - at least those who are part of a circle (coterie) because now when Mark or Rick (I agree with whoever said "Rico" is such a cool name!) or Tyler want to comment on something I've posted they will write a post that links to mine, bumping up the Google Page Rank (see above) and so my prominence.
BUT, these same "benefits" of RSI that make it so Web 2.0 (and there is lots I've missed out here) also mean that I get comments like the one below - from an anonymous online reader, who echoes what some real life readers have asked - "does anyone ever post comments?" Well it's because AKMA or Peter or Jim no longer (usually) post a comment on the blog, they write a post on their own blogs. So does RSI (as the only technology from the Web 2.0 bundle that I - partly - understand) make Web 2.0 more relational or does it merely allow the Amazons to "personalize(*) " my web "experience"?
[to Del.icio.us]
See, people do leave comments.
Anyway some good thoughts on RSS and comments. It would be interesting to see whether the networking "defining" the "blogosphere" is declining through the death of comments. Are the structures or networks of communication that are now in place between bloggers growing, allowing new bloggers in? Or are we seeing the formation of more formalized communities solidifying? Are people meeting and interacting with new people or now just their established circle?
By 
Stephen G, at
November 22, 2005 11:04 PM
Yes! This kind of thought is just what I had in mind, other discussion round the topic of the effects of "naming" a group it seems as if not only RSS but also social dynamics are making (parts of?) Blogaria a less open and welcoming place than it once was ;(
By Tim, at
November 23, 2005 1:46 AM
I’ve always had a mixed feeling about comments, going way, way back. For ages I didn’t implement commenting on my blog, and I’ve never been a prolific commenter; part of the point of my blog, after all, is to provide a venue where I state what I think about matters that interest me. If I want to recall what I said about the James ossuary and it may be on any of numerous biblioblogs, my comments are a good deal less accessible to me than if I write it on my own blog (where I can also go in, fix typos, add afterthoughts, and so on). Comments on other people’s blogs just don’t offer as much usefulness.
That said, I do leave comments now and then, and often do so via my RSS newsreader, and I add a feed to my newsreader more readily than I add someone to my blogroll or create a link to them in my blog text — so RSS may not be the blight you describe.
By AKMA, at
November 24, 2005 4:09 AM
From what you say either your RSS aggregator is more capable then Bloglines, or you've learned to do more with it! My impression talking to people is that for most of us, reading blogs via a "reader" means that we neither seem nor can we add comments. Unless we open the post in a browser window.
On your blog as memory repository idea, that function is important to me too, what I do when the topic is one I'm likely to want to find later, is to enlarge the comment I leave into a post of my owm as well.
Comments are one of the technologies that made tghe old blogaria such an open and welcoming place. They allowed the neophyte access to the communities. I remember when I began, I went through the stage of not daring to join in someone else's conversation (a lurker), to leaving occasional timid comments, and when people resopnded in the comments or by email to those I began to feel "accepted", finally when people followed those comments to my blog and left comments of their own I felt accepted... How does a newbie today get into a community in Blogaria? Or has Blogaria become tribal and class-conscious?
By Tim, at
November 24, 2005 10:17 PM
I have to admit AKMA's point about the utility of comments, but the relational aspect of blogging is greater than data-holding.
I find time or knowledge more of a deterrent to commenting, rather than some idea of exclusivity. That said, I comment more often on blogs of people that I know in RL.
I've never used bloglines, I combine firefoc with the 'sage' extension to follow my feeds. It allows easy access to commenting.
