Blurry Lines and The Speed of the Blogosphere
If there's one thing I love about blogs it is the speed in which they work, a story travels and the pitch delivered. Before blogs I was very used to forums where the original poster controlled the topic and the entire audience would be gathered on the one spot.
Now, the blogosphere treats things differently. Every individual can take the one story to their own home and play it out to their own audience of invited (or otherwise) guests.
Seeing the Print Vs Online debate of Allan Jenkins and Steve Crescenzo continue provides an interesting case. With blogs it is always personal, but you can never tell how much. And here is no different.
The latest installment has Allan firing back at Steve and the fact the Steve failed to provide a link or trackback to Allan's original post for his readers to reference.
Sure, it was evident that Steve picked an angle and rolled with it. Taking offence at Allan making a comment that could include him:
any IABC member can go into the blogosphere and find 50 better articles than CW publishes in a quarter
I'm interested more in the cross-site nature of the conversation and the tools used. What gets said in comments, posts, trackbacks. What works better.
What benefits does Steve gain from not allowing trackbacks or linking on his posts?
Update - 16/11/05 23:15: Seems they are both taking it in good fun. Allan being more used to Steve than I am naturally, can spot this. I've spent far too long moderating forums and seen these sort of disagreements descend to anarchy I guess. It's a new world.
Steve also holds his hand up to the linking and trackback issue being technical ignorance. Darn, I was hoping he was making a stance!
Technorati Tag = Intersite Conversation Blog Conversation
posted by Dan Hill at
10:31 PM
3 Comments:
Actually, Steve says he doesn't know how to allow trackbacks on his site, or how to link to other sites.
Lame excuse, but I "know" Steve through friends and his reputation, so I take him at his word when he says he does not know how to do this.
It limits his blog's effectiveness because none of his readers can read what he's referring to, nor can they see how the discussion is developing.
For me (and others in the conversation), we end up having a conversation about Steve, not with him.
Blogs are just websites until two or three or four bloggers start discussing a topic... then it becomes a collaborative thing that could be interesting. Blogging alone is just pontificating into the desert night.
He ends up publishing minutes from a conversation he can only watch.
Allan, thanks for taking the time to respond.
It is of course up to him to decide, now that it has been raised as an issue, whether he takes the time out to learn these tools.
At least then it will be a decision opposed to blissful unawareness.
It would be nice to have him in the full conversation, although it seems to be an effective way of encouraging comments...
Dan:
In my experience, one of the most frustrating things about bulletin boards was when one poster would take a snippet of another's post and blow it out of proportion.
That would hijack the whole thread and take it way off tangent.
I think that happens with blogs, too ... for example, Steve's reaction to Allan's original post was a bit over the top in that he took one or two lines and made them the centerpiece of his whole rant.
But it seems to happen less frequently with blogs, perhaps because of the conversational nature of them. And because they are not threaded, the blogger has to provide context, backup and links that makes it more difficult to parse another's post.
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