Bitchin' about Aggregator posts on Techmeme

Saturday, April 12. 2008

Bitchin' about Aggregator posts on Techmeme

I know its dreadfully bad form to comment on a story once its made Techmeme, but its only Saturday and this one may qualify as a "bitchmeme" Lite so it might be OK as its only supposed to be here on Sunday

.

In essence the issue discussed is allegedly (its actually all about Friendfeed shock horror

) that these aggregators are taking commenting and all that away from the blogs, and "the conversation" is happening elsewhere. In fact, one of the commentators on the blog post commented that:

Now, when I post something to my blog, not only do I have to keep an eye on and be active in the comments there, but also on "X" number of these social sites that are aggregating my full feed with their own comments. Of course, that means that I have to sign up and be a member of that site, or risk not being involved in conversations about content I created in the first place. Simply put, that's too much freakin' work!

Indeed - we ain't going to chase down 101 aggregators to answer comments, and I suspect most rational bloggers won't either (hmmm...thought - is that an oymoron) - so here's my thesis; anyone who wants to talk to the blogger will probably do it on the blog still, or on a social network they use.

Broadstuff uses Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed et al just as distribution mechanisms for people who like to aggregate their posts that way - we also use email and RSS to do this job. We have readers split across all these distribution mediums.

And for this reason I think all these Feedread type aggregator plays that are trying to create their own platforms are medium term f*cked (no matter how much PR $5m can buy

) as any form of large scale service - they are just too disjointed, the only way it works is if one of them gets totally dominant market share - but by dominant I mean not only among similar aggregators, but among them and microblogging site users, RSS feedread users, email users etc.

But - and here's a warning - our stuff is Creative Copyrighted - so if anyone tries to monetise it by selling ads around it, or aggregating it and selling it on to corporates as market research, then we will get grumpy. Got that?

Maybe what would be more useful than a Friendfeed downstream aggregator is a "reverse aggregator", where people who want to comment on any one of these media can do so and it pops up on the blog page, allowng other commentators on other aggregators to see the conversation.

Posted by Alan Patrick in Blogging & Blogs at 10:22 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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Great post Alan. Here's my verbose response (but it's a mammoth issue - my lame excuse)

(1) Initially, in terms of connecting blogosphere conversation together there was trackback, but then along came the traditional publishers and they couldn't deal with the (spam / gaming) issues, nor incorporate the lessons of online communities' design or etiquette so far. Thus the promise held out by trackback (see Nico Macdonald, 'Comment is Free,' but designing communities is hard, Online Journalism Review, 17th July 2006 http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060817macdonald/) was quashed.

(2) Then trackback spam arrived (your favourite Alan) - possibly the final nail in the coffin of trackback's potential (if we agree trackback pings are the watered-down substitute).

(3) In turn, beyond mere feed readers, more sophisticated aggregators like Netvibes and other "thin portals of widgets" (to quote Mike Butcher on a post about Sleevenotez he wrote on Vecosys, since by the blog owner) entered the arena. Social web and mobile stuff more generally - rather than just the blogosphere - at least became more manageable [see also Jaiku, though it's gone quiet since Google acquired - and interesting lifestream propositions like Rememble http://www.rememble.com/].

(4) But before we could take a breath, social networks went zoom, and we were pouring tons of valuable-to-trivial content, discussion and links (it's all a continuum, right) into the likes of Facebook and Bebo. But it was hellish-difficult/impossible to connect this back out to the open internet, the ahead of its time BlogFriends for pouring back in notwithstanding.

(5) Now we have the next wave of aggregators: Friendfeed, favorit, Plaxo's Pulse feature, the recently souped-up MyBlogLog et al.

(6) And hot on their tails - for the blogerati - Cocomment, Disqus, SezWho, and IntenseDebate became part of the equation, some of whom even have social network integration in their pipeline apparently

[my, that sounds rather painful]

(7) This doesn't even factor in the photo and video outfits out there - Seesmic, Qik, Flickr video, Google Video, Vimeo, BlipTV, Moblog and the like; especially the cross-platform players among them. Who has even mentioned or interrogated their part in the connected web in this month's discussion? Yep, time to remove the old-skool web goggles.

So now that the conversation has left the blogosphere [ReadWriteWeb, 20th March 2008 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_conversation_has_left_the_blogosphere.php] where does that leave us?

If the walled garden is crumbling, but our attention is ever more stretched, and our conversational quality and digital health suffering, is the model of aggregating eyeballs doomed or due for a fresh lease of life from the most innovative but implacably dominating mover in this space?

And / or in biz parlance, has the reverse aggregator got legs?

I'd love to hear what folks think about all or any of this. Then I can go back to knitting or eating chocolate to calm down - apparently that's what works for people who aren't bona fide geeks and seen to be interrogating stuff above their station, or asking questions that are difficult. Who knew? Go experts!

#1 Deirdre Molloy (Homepage) on 2008-04-12 19:44 (Reply)

Oops, the following bit of my comment above missed a word, added an unnecessary "s" to "portal", and other errors. Here's what I meant to say. I've bracketed out the "s" and added the missing word in shouty Stateside capitals

(3) In turn, beyond mere feed readers, more sophisticated aggregators like Netvibes and other "thin portal[s] of widgets" (to quote Mike Butcher on a post about Sleevenotez he wrote
on Vecosys, since DELETED by the blog owner) entered the arena.

Mea culpa

If I have time/energy I might re-post on my own blog. phew!

#1.1 Deirdre Molloy (Homepage) on 2008-04-12 20:11 (Reply)

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