I want to be a part of the “reader-space” of blogs or web-sites rather than a part of the Google-reader ecosystem.
As most of my readers know, I’m big on Google Reader (and I have a reputation for that!). I’m a part of a wonderful ecosystem and get to look-at or read a lot of interesting stuff. I get a lot of variety, stuff that I wouldn’t normally have come across. It keeps me from staying in a tiny well, reading the same kind of stuff, over and over again. I also like the fact that it acts as an archival system for me. I can go back and read posts, which don’t exist on the web, anymore.
But, I have a problem with this ecosystem. It’s killing the the communities around the blogs or sites, themselves. The reader count may have gone up, but the discussion and activity of the community on the blogs is going down; at least on the blogs I look at. Blogs are rather dead, these days. But, when one’s following over 200 blogs, you can’t expect much better. It is difficult to keep up with all of them; even the ones that one kept up well with, before. People stop going back to the comments; stop participating in the discussion.
Do you agree? Do you think it’ll help it feed readers keep track of the comments and updates? Or is the only way to cut down on feed-reading and getting back to the old exciting way of checking out blogs? I recall an old quote I read - If it’s not worth remembering, it’s not worth reading.
UPDATE: I wasn’t talking of my blog or comments here, in particular (if that’s not already clear). I was talking of blogs, that I read regularly, blogs of people I know well (including mine). But then, there are blogs, that have over 1000 comments on a single post, too. Should the above quote could be changed to read - “If it’s not worth reading, it’s not worth remembering.” ?