Diffusing is Confusing But Necessary
Struck by something in Dave Winer’s post today, near the bottom:
…but I’m hoping we escape the grips of centralized thinking and remember that what made blogs work was that everyone gets their own platform to speak their mind. TechMeme takes us back to the place that didn’t work, where everyone fights for scarce attention.
Our websites are a point in space, and a moment in time, but they are not the end-all of our online presence any longer. To be engaged, fully, on the web, is to build your passports, configure your listening tools, and launch off to all the various places that hold pertinent conversations and information at hand.
Is search the most important tool, or just the most used? How’s listening starting to rank for you? Because to me, listening is a big part of the game.
Comments and Why RSS Is Not Enough
Hopefully, someone amazing like Dave Winer will come along and explain to me(us) where this is going.
I dipped into a TechCrunch post to see what people had to say about a recent post, and realized that the comments there are just as important as the posts most time. Sounds like how I feel about here, right?
My thought is that RSS as a communications medium, while being wholly responsible for all the good and wonderful and magical things that have come to the web over the last 5 or 6 years, might need an upgrade. Why? Because I want the comment flow. I want to be part of the back and forth of the conversation under the hood.
Yes, I understand that some blogging platforms have a separate RSS feed for comments, but is that the right solution to the problem? I don’t think so. I think it has to be something more robust, and maybe with a toggle.
What’s your take? Just as I’m telling people to use RSS readers to absorb their blogs and podcasts and the like, I’m thinking that the experience of the original site, especially in the comments department, is important to the larger media picture. True? Wrong?
(Think of this as a thought in process that I hope others will improve with their own opinions).
Pictures uploaded with plasq’s Skitch.
