Comments on: Blogging is the hardest “conversation” I’ve ever had

By: Vincent Gable’s Blog » (Hyper)Text is King of Substace

Vincent Gable’s Blog » (Hyper)Text is King of Substace — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:49:24 +0000

[...] Videos, speech, etc. will always carry more emotional content. But for consuming ideas, text offers the highest bandwidth and most precision. Unfortunately, writing well takes time, and can hinder conversation. [...]

By: Tanya Heat

Tanya Heat — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:18:56 +0000

Even after going through their website, I can’t quiet comprehend what the main advantage of this function as at relates to WordPress comment feature

By: Danielle Fong

Danielle Fong — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:15:42 +0000

Because a blogpost is written to a less specific audience, I put far more effort into linking, footnotes, and context. They’re also far longer, and are edited more thoroughly: I try to maximize the accessible information density, or at least the surprise/entertainment value.

By: Erigami

Erigami — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:35:25 +0000

I'd add another cost to using a blog as a conversational tool: the blog writer has to provide enough context for their readers to understand the conversation at the point they're picking it up. That adds a lot of overhead to the writing the post.

Pingbacks and trackbacks are supposed to add to the conversational transparency, but I'm not convinced that they work well in that context.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:39:28 +0000

@ Michael Hoisie: Good point. Using an RSS reader probably makes it even harder to comment on a blog post. But maybe if it was easier to follow conversations as they happened, then the conversations would be more engaging?

@ Danielle Fong: The time you're referring to is overhead that's independent of the medium. If you were writing an email of the same length, it would take you just as long, right? Or because a blog post seems somehow more permanent, do you think you spend more time on it than you would an email?

@Scott Frey: Thanks for the pointer.

By: Scott Frey

Scott Frey — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:28:46 +0000

Everyone should check out Disqus’s new “Rebloging” feature that turns any comment into its own blog post.

By: Scott Frey

Scott Frey — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:19:02 +0000

I really liked your post. I even extended the conversation on my blog. I just signed up for coComment, and will stream it over to my Friendfeed account. In my opinion, social aggregators are the best bet for having a more complete conversation, but they still could do better.

By: The Grand Discussion « Scott T. Frey

The Grand Discussion « Scott T. Frey — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:13:53 +0000

[...] 26, 2008 · No Comments I happened across an interesting article after clinic today, and I puzzled over it on my way totry out yet another burrito restaurant. I have to agree whole heartedly with the author. Blogs are fantastic launch pads for conversation, but could use some help supporting and enhancing debate. The development of discussions surrounding a post is limited by the community that a given article can reach, and is further hindered because conversation will not exist in a singular forum where it would have its fullest growth. [...]

By: Danielle Fong

Danielle Fong — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:49:44 +0000

It takes a while for me to write a well crafted post. The first draft takes around a 4 hours for me, for a 3000 word post. Then finding images takes another 30 minutes, finding links and referencing things properly and making footnotes takes around two hours. Editing takes at least as long as the writing. Then I ask my friends to read it, refine it based on their input, and then release it and evangelize it a bit, that's around another three hours. I read it over and over, and make updates as I think of them and as correspondence dictates. Keeping 'online' takes around six hours.

All told, crafting a decent post takes around 20 hours of work for me, and that's after the research phase, where I gather links, quotes, images, ideas, false starts, design, and try out some of the concepts in conversation. But I wouldn't be satisfied with anything less.

By: Michael Hoisie

Michael Hoisie — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:35:36 +0000

Yeah, it is a disconnected conversation. I think the main reason is that blogs have startingly low engagement compared to other services on the web, especially social networks. And it seems to be this way by design — blog content is meant to be consumed as fast as possible (just look at the point of rss readers). It’s not uncommon for people to crank through a blog post in half a minute through Google Reader. They just don’t have the patience to seek out related stuff.