Comments for The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere

The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere

2008-03-20T21:42:35Z

We've seen a lot of new aggregation services and lifestreaming applications come into play recently, and we've questioned whether they're adding to the conversation or just adding to our information overload. (See our coverage on FriendFeed, for example). And today, MyBlogLog even added even more lifestreams to subscribe to.

The truth of the matter is, like it or not, the conversations that once existed solely in the blogosphere have now moved on. People still comment, but in a lot of cases, those comments aren't on found on the blog itself. So the question is, has the conversation become diluted among all the different services and applications? Or is it just adding layers to the original topic? And most importantly, how can you keep up?

]]> Blogs and Commenting

This morning on the Blog Herald, Jason Kaneshiro, brought up this very topic. When people post an article on a blog these days, the conversations are occurring offsite. The blog link could be submitted to Digg, Mixx, and/or FriendFeed, and conversations may occur around the topic on those sites instead. The original blog post, meanwhile, has 0 comments. Jason asks: "Does this bother you as a blogger? How about as a user?"

He mentions that for many bloggers, the sentiment is that conversation-relocation is detrimental to the blog itself. If no one is commenting on the blog, will the blog lose readers? Will the blog lose traffic? Others feel that bloggers don't own the conversation - let it occur where it may.

Whether you agree or disagree with this sentiment, the real question now is, how can you keep up?

Bloggers today want to know the answers to questions like: Is my article being read? Is it being commented on? Is it being dugg? What are the diggers saying? What do the commenters say? Was it liked on FriendFeed? Did it show up on twitter? What are my friends reading? What are they saying? etc.

Here's How To Keep Up

Before becoming too overwhelmed, it's time to find some solutions. To stay in touch with so many different sources of conversation and activity, let's turn to RSS.

Begin by getting a list of all the feeds you want to keep track of. Here some I recommend, you can pick and choose which ones are right for you:

Twitter Friends: You can subscribe to your Twitter friends feed, but if you're also going to subscribe to your FriendFeed, which may include Twitter, then you should skip this. Best for Twitter purists only.
Twitter Replies: Twitter offers you a way to subscribe to your replies only. At the bottom of the Twitter replies is an RSS link to http://twitter.com/statuses/replies.rss. You'll then need to enter in your Twitter username and password to be authenticated in order to get your feed.
Twitter Topics: You can use TweetScan to search for any topic on Twitter and create a feed for it. This can be useful for someone who may have forgotten the "@" when replying to you, since you can have it search for just your username or common misspellings of your username.
FriendFeed: The hottest new thing. Aggregate everything and then pick up your FriendFeed feed from the bottom of your "Friends" page.
FriendFeed Comment Finder: This great new app was built with Yahoo Pipes and it will create a feed with your FriendFeed comments and people who "liked" your content.
FriendFeed Minus Twitter: Also from the wonderful Dawn Foster of the comment finder, you can create a Yahoo Pipes feed for your FriendFeed minus your Twitter updates, if you would prefer to keep them separate.
Facebook Status Updates: Track everything your friends are doing on Facebook. Click on "Friends," then choose the "Status Updates" option. On the right, click "Friends' Status Feed."
Facebook Posted Items: You can also grab a feed for your friends' posted items from the Posted Items page.
MySpace: MySpace isn't as giving with their feeds as Facebook, but you can still get one if you're crafty. For example, you can get a feed of your MySpace Comments by following the tutorial at 5ThirtyOne if you want to go this route. MySpace blogs already have feeds if you want to subscribe to any of those.
Digg: Keep track of your Digg comments with Diggwatch. This application lets you find, browse, and track your digg comments and their replies over the last 14 days. You can track by your username, the username of a friends, or you can track the stories and comments posted from a particular domain. The best part is that the service generates feeds for these items for you.
Social Site Submission Watch Dog: With this Yahoo Pipe, you can track how your site is being promoted on Digg
MyBlogLog: You may as well pick up the MyBlogLog lifestream while you're at it, found on your homepage: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/username.
SocialThing: For those not on FriendFeed, SocialThing is the other aggregating option.
Flickr: Photographers, don't forget to include your flickr feed to get the latest activity on your photos via RSS. The easiest way to get to this is to go to your Flickr photo page and scroll to the bottom where the "Activity" links are listed. You can also pick up feeds for comments you've made, photos from your groups, or photos from your friends.
RSSMeme: The problem with RSSMeme is that there isn't a way to just subscribe to a comments feed for any one user (like yourself or your friends) or even a comments feed for the "Popular" stories. You're best bet is to subscribe to the "Popular" feed and then keep an eye out to see if any of your stories or those of your friends make it there.

The final step is to subscribe to all the feeds in your RSS reader of choice, or on your homepage of choice like Netvibes or iGoogle. You can also try to blend them all together as a unified feed, too, using a service like feedblendr.com, and just subscribe to that instead.

I'm curious to know what other RSS feed sources you would include - please suggest some in the comments...or on Twitter...or in FriendFeed...or wherever!

Comment from Aaron White on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T22:48:20Z

Well, I follow both my own comment discussions, and the comment discussions of friends on Disqus: you can get various RSS feeds out of that as well

Comment from Ian Kennedy on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T22:48:57Z

Hi Sarah,

Just to be clear, MyBlogLog is all about sending folks back to the source to leave their comments. I feel this is the philosophical difference between what we do (distribution and discovery) and other services that consume but do not share back.

Ian
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/iankennedy/

Comment from engtech on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T23:05:14Z

I put together a greasemonkey script that makes the Friend Feed filter by service icons more visible.

http://internetducttape.com/2008/03/20/greasemonkey-script-filter-friendfeed-by-service/

Remember that with FF you can click on options and unsubscribe from similar items by that user.. great way of unsubscribing from last.fm feeds you don't want to follow, etc.

Comment from David Hersh on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T23:05:33Z

Assuming for a second that we're talking about bloggers like yourself (and not average Joe's sharing their lives with friends and family), I think the conversations that happen off-blog are great, and potentially far more valuable to the blogger. People who are willing to post comments on a public blog like RWW are the minority. On the other hand, people are far more comfortable discussing things with their friends and family. Where do those friends and family discussions happen online? On social networking sites. This behavior has the added benefit of distributing the bloggers content to a wider audience, and the trusted relationships found on (at least some) social networks give a tacit endorsement to the blogger. On the flip side, unlike a site like Digg, these discussions happening within people's social networks often aren't accessible to the blog author so he/she has no idea that they're happening.

I see this happen all the time on Multiply. Someone will use a BlogThis link, an AddThis button or simply manually cut-and-past a blog/article into a post for their network. The discussion around that content is far more meaningful and engaging than that associated with the original blog because you have a social connection to the other people involved in the discussion. A far more comfortable environment that engaging in discussion with random strangers.

I've been exposed to many new bloggers/content sites by virtue of engaging in conversation around some of their content brought into Multiply by someone in my social circle.

Comment from kayvaan on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T23:16:36Z

Seems like the best bet to help accomplish a lifestream is achieving some level of semantic web.

If the meta-data around your conversation is easily discoverable, then it's just a matter of indexing it and identifying what you want to track.

Frankly, I don't leave lots of blog comments because I simply don't have the bandwith to track all the comment streams.

I imagine the web as an infinitely large building with infinite floors and hallways and rooms.

I also have my own room in this building (which is basically my head) where I reside.

Every blog, forum, etc. place where I can leave a comment is a room in this thing. I enter the room, find an interesting group of people and topic and make a comment.

But after I leave many times I forget that I'd been there and don't come back to see what's become of the conversation.

The current lifestream aggregators don't quite do that. What they actually are doing is pulling all of these rooms together into one giant room. It's a huge room with a hundred conversations going on at once. And then they add some little rooms off to the side where people can go and have sidebar conversations about their conversations! Yeah, no.

The room is too noisy. I simply can't follow everything for the din.

All I want is a list of all the rooms in which I'm having active conversations and notifications when the conversation progresses (as well as the ability to indicate that I'm no longer interested in that conversations).

If I want, I can go to the room where the conversation is taking place and continue participating. But if I don't want to go there, then I shouldn't have to hear it.

The walls should be soundproof.

Comment from Shannon on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T23:29:15Z

I have to say that I do agree that so many services trying to make our lives easier are somehow making it "just one more thing" to add to my list.

That said, I do love MBL's aggregator and FriendFeed.

I haven't yet noticed a decline in commenting on blogs, in fact for my personal beauty blogs that are non-PR related, commenting has increased. Then again, it's not too often that a beauty post is found on Digg, so the conversation tends to stay where it originated from.

Comment from Olivier on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T23:43:46Z

After reading your article, I searched and found the best Yahoo Pipe ever! Facebook Status Updates MINUS Twitter by spaetzel: http://tinyurl.com/25z688. The pipe gets rid of all Facebook status updates starting with "X is twittering...". Brilliant!

Comment from Alex Iskold on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T00:01:04Z

This is brilliant topic, Sarah!

I think that conversation must happen around content. This way, there is context and meaning. Life streaming is at odds with this for sure...

Alex

Comment from Corvida on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T00:02:09Z

The commenting could definitely be better. I complained about it enough in one post. You covered some great points early on in the post.

Thanks for these links though. I like the yahoo pipes one about keeping track of articles that's dug. Got it in my Google Reader now.

Comment from Nick on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T00:08:31Z

As soon as the FriendFeed API hits the streets, someone is going to make a widget that pulls FriendFeed comments either to simply be displayed on the post, or to be submitted into the blog's actual comment system, a "FriendFeed Comment to Wordpress Comment Plug-in," for example.

Comment from Dawn Foster on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T00:40:58Z

Thanks, I'm flattered that you included 2 of my creations in this list!

Comment from Derek on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T03:25:54Z

Are some form of trackbacks the solution? Discussion taking place off the blog is definitely a good thing, but like Ian said, these aggregation services need to give something back to the sources of the content that makes them successful. The step after that would be a standard formatting of the comments so the discussion could be scraped from the 3rd party site.

Perfect harmony. I give you content & you give me discussion.

Comment from John Tropea on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T04:37:37Z

You could use Friendfeed in the final step, as Steve Rubel uses the imaginary friends feature as an aggregator
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/03/friendfeeds-ima.html

Comment from Ivo Quartiroli on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T05:25:17Z

If I'd keep track of all those feeds I won't have any time to reflect on the contents of my writings. The search for the ultimate aggregator seems the quest for discovering the ultimate sub-atomic particels. Aggregators and feeds are going to multiply as rabbits feeding on our already scattered attention.

When it comes to food intake, we became aware just in the past few decades of the deadly consequences of saturated fats, sugary foods and excessive consumption of red meats, which in the previous decades were greedily consumed as a celebration of abundance and improved economic status. With regard to information intake, we are now exposing ourselves to excesses, the ramifications of which will only be visible to us in the coming years. We waited with reforming our eating habits until there were tragic consequences for our bodies, hopefully we won’t delay adapting our computer behaviour until there are tragic consequences for the human mind.

In both industries there are enormous economic interests involved, therefore the growth of awareness of the possible dangers were very slow concerning food and are accordingly slow concerning technology. We will need “information dietetics”. More on my article http://www.indranet.org/computer-addiction-as-survival-for-the-ego/

Comment from nothanks on 2008-03-20

2008-03-21T06:36:01Z

Boring and full of BS

Comment from Anne Helmond on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T08:22:08Z

One of my favorite topics that can't deserve enough attention. Here are some additional thoughts I previously wrote for the Blog Herald:

Commenting Issues in the Blogosphere
Where Do You Leave Your Comments?

Comment from Vincent on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T12:07:20Z

Hmm, I think there is a difference between aggregators—twitter, Digg, friendfeed, etc.—and content-sites. The reasons why blogs are so popular is because they allow individuals to create content, often for free. It gives them a voice.

I agree that aggregators give access to a network of content, but the source of it is, with some exceptions, not the aggregators, it's what they are linking to.

For live-blogging, on the other hand, I do think that twitter, etc. is a good medium to provide content.

Comment from Vincent on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T12:16:46Z

Aah, conversation, I see. Scrap/delete comment above. I still think that conversation originates somewhere and this post makes it sound like blogs are no longer needed.

Comment from Louis on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T12:27:10Z

It kind of goes back to what Hugh Mcleod at Gaping Void calls social objects. Content does not become a social object until two or more people start strike up a conversation about it. I want a tool that lets me grab text from a web page or a whole web page / blog post and turn it into a social object for me and all or some of my contacts on one or more social networking sites or platforms including email/IM/mobile.

If I want to keep the discussion private, I should be able to, but a) the discussion must give credit (and link back) to the source of the social object and b) the author of that source should be aware that a private conversation is occurring about his/her post.

Facebook would do well to implement such a tool but it would have to open it up to support other social networks and platforms otherwise the tools success would be short-lived.

I haven't tried FriendFeed yet by the way or Disqus so perhaps they offer aspects of what I am proposing

Comment from Dennis McDonald on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T12:58:17Z

My low-tech solution to track comments I make elsewhere is to use the tag COMMENTS when I bookmark the commented page or post on del.icio.us. That way I can always go back: http://www.ddmcd.com/my-comments-elsewhere/

Comment from Alex on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T13:07:05Z

it feels like the web is shattering into a million little pieces, it'll be interesting to see how we can pick them all up again...

Comment from Terry Heaton on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T14:22:15Z

Great post. I find it just a bit ironic that the blogosphere — the place where stories were lifted from the mainstream press for "discussion" — is now faced with the same issue that mainstreamers have been fighting for years. Who knew? A disruption of the disruption.

Comment from Bill Seitz on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T14:29:48Z

Remember the days when we thought Technorati would integrate all this for us?

sigh

Maybe Google BlogSearch/Reader will pull this stuff together?

Comment from Dave Martin on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T16:28:39Z

Bravos, Sarah. Well said! btw, I discovered your post via FriendFeed

Comment from Brian Solis on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T18:08:30Z

Well written. While you share a variety of great solutions for listening to conversations, I think the bigger issue relates more to your headline and intro.

Our attention is indeed thinning and the motivation for leaving more thoughtful comments at the point of distribution is waning.

In January, I wrote "The Value of Online Conversations" as a way of encouraging those who may suffer from the attention crash to engage, demonstrate expertise, and keep valuable discussions online and thriving over time.

http://www.briansolis.com/2008/01/value-of-online-conversations.html

Comment from Phil on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T18:49:26Z

I've been thinking some more about the discussion at Blog Herald, and I've got three more possible solutions:

1. Use the magic of jQuery to directly insert the relevant parts of other websites into your own (preferably with a collapsible DIV or some such).

2. Grab all of the RSS feeds for comments on your article (including those from your own website), integrate them with SimplePie, and display.

3. Grab RSS feeds with SimplePie, as for 2, then save them into your database and display as normal comments. Who needs an API?!

Ideas 2 and 3 should be pretty easy to implement. The problem with those ideas, which much more viable than 1, is handling threaded comments from an external source on an unthreaded-comment blog. If you;re just sorting by date, then whatever. But a little intelligence in the aggregation (e.g. inserting '@' link-backs) could preserve the flow somewhat.

Comment from Brian Blank on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T19:47:27Z

This is so true and one of the ever-growing pains in trying to grasp social media and blogging. Just as soon as you get your CEO on board with the blogging concept, the rules change :)

Great list of RSS mechanisms to stay on top of everything. I still think if we all maintain active monitoring and active roles in LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, reddit we will have zero hours in the day to get done what we get paid to do!

I think you have to be selective, find the ones that work best for you and do those well!

Brian

Comment from Charlie Anzman on 2008-03-21

2008-03-21T21:36:53Z

Hi Sarah and thanks for the links!. Some cool stuff here. Lifestreaming is relatively new and no doubt will see some growth then consolidation. I honestly see it as a way to create MORE readers (Am I the only one that clicks??). Right now, there's a lot of truth to what you're saying. I probably waste a half hour a day on this stuff BUT others are leveraging the various services to promote and obtain viewers. I for one have discovered more great sites in the past few months (particularly through Twitter and Friendfeed) than being 'stuck' in the same reading cycle... and occasionally re-write my blogroll accordingly. We should be keeping an eye on Google Reader. What Google does there next will probably change this landscape.

Comment from Antony Berkman on 2008-03-22

2008-03-22T10:18:07Z

BlogCatalog's dashboard feature provides bloggers with a set of tools that specifically address the problem of keeping up with relevant conversations.

* the BC Dashboard provides a news feed of the social network activites, of people you are following.

* Since BC is a blogger focused community, the feeds also display when anyone posts a new blog as well as what they are doing across BC

* A SocialFeed widget is available that can be placed anywhere and displays your own feed which your followers can subscribe to

* SocialSearch is BC's new search engine that lets you quickly search the latest social community activities of over 100,000 bloggers, many top bloggers included, across Digg, SU, Twitter and 27 other networks.

Comment from bhc3 on 2008-03-22

2008-03-22T20:08:10Z

I think you're spot on here Sarah. The migration of comments away from the blog to a lifestream aggregator, such as FriendFeed, to me represents the start of a larger trend. The lifestream becomes the primary cloud into which updates and content are shared among friends. The tools that form the disparate social networks today, like Twitter, Flickr, etc. become just tools. Our social networks no longer are tied up in individual apps. They're in the lifestream cloud.

This makes it a lot of easier to switch to better apps but not lose your social connections.

More on this here: http://tinyurl.com/29cu6k.

Comment from bhc3 on 2008-03-22

2008-03-22T20:34:04Z

That tinyURL in my post above appears not to be working, so here's the full URL:

http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/friendfeed-will-make-switching-social-networks-easier/

Comment from xavierv on 2008-03-22

2008-03-23T02:00:26Z

One day we value wide spread online discussions, and the other we complain that ad dollars are flying away from our site. There's no universal response to this article's question, it all depends on our motivations as writers.

On another level, aggregating all your inputs in a reader doesn't solve a thing. I say, follow only the people and blogs that really matter, and focus your online activity there. Consistency is key.