Has RSS caused blog comments to dramatically decline? Is it an effect of one’s blog getting more popular? Is it random?
None of those answers make much sense to me, but I and several of my friends (Dacia, Rusty, Jen, Duane… just to name a few) have noticed that we don’t get nearly as many comments as we used to.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Quality is way more important than quantity. The “great post!” comments are certainly nice, but if those are the only comments, well, something is lacking. And I certainly don’t want assholish or outright trollish comments. I mean why do you think I banned valeko, Andisheh, and a few other repeat offenders?
Interesting conversation is what we all want, right? And shit, people, that’s not unique to blogs. That’s life.
And yeah, unfortunately, sometimes when there’s been a lot of conversation on a post I’ve written, it happened to coincide with a very busy time in my off-blog life, so that I simply wasn’t able to sit down and write in-depth replies. Other times, I admit, the flurry of conversation has been a little over-stimulating, and I’ve been content to sit back and enjoy it vicariously - and I don’t mean that in a negative way; what I mean is, I like listening to smart, interesting people talk!
So I hope you all will comment more. I know that lots of smart, interesting people read my blog (flattery will get me everywhere!), and we have lots of good conversations elsewhere (even if they’re getting kind of fragmented, with things like Twitter and Tumblr) - so yeah I guess I’m being selfish and saying, I want some good conversation here!
I don’t want flaming, or stupidity, or trolling… but good conversation. Like hanging out at a (non-smokey, not too loud) bar, except you don’t have to leave your house or spend money. (Unless you want to!)
(I am resisting the urge to create a “navel-gazing” tag to use with this post. Frankly I’m sick of my own self-deprecation. As Fred Stoeker would say, “It stops here!”)
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7 Responses to "Blog comments: ebb and flow?"
I’ve gotten used to the occasional comment drought. My guess is that there are times where everybody is just too busy to comment. They might agree with what you’ve posted, enough to sit at their desks and nod affirmatively, but instead of commenting … well … they’ve got to check the laundry or feed a pet or go run a marathon.
And you know, I can never tell what post will be the one to attract more comments than others. Of late, the posts that pulled the most responses have been about normal everyday things like going to the dentist. To this day, my longest ever comment train was from a post about Home Depot.
Twitter is changing the somewhat chatty nature of blogging. Now, those few people that would drop a comment on any given post, just to say hello, they’ve shifted over to Twitter. Tweets are more immediate. And frankly, more closely resemble actual conversation. Overall, this is a positive, but there is certainly a loss to be taken over here in blogland.
Are feeds hurting? Well, they’re pulling traffic, most definitely. It is so much easier on the eye and mind to just use a reader, as opposed to the previous method of alt-clicking blog link after blog link to check all your favorites in an endless row of browser tabs.
What else …
Well, you know already why my comments are so rare. I’ve told you already that my employer sees fit to block your URL from view. Other employers might as well. And so, for most of my day, all I can do is read your feed, making occasional mental notes when a post strikes me as something worth a delayed comment.
Luckily, I stumbled across this post while sitting comfortably at home …
I’m totally going with RSS as the reason. But with most things, I bet it’s just a cycle that will work itself out in time.
Of course, I’m the person that just discovered Google Reader and RSS a few months ago. ;-)
Actually, somehow your blog loads much better now for me than it used to, so expect to see more from moi! (uh oh!)
it’s true, things seem slower all around…and since I don’t tweet at all, or do feeds (old school me and all) it all just seems terribly odd.
Actually…confession…I don’t much like tweets. No real meat in ‘em…nothing to sit down and grab onto and READ generally. Tweets are to blogging what plot is to porn! ;)
I am old school too. The last time I was state of the art (w/r/t tech, anyway) was in 1990, I think. I was in awe of all the techy things Amber was doing at WAM while I was playing brickbreaker and gossiping.
Thomas,
Yeah, people get busy, but this is more of a general trend, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. To me that says that something else is going on. I think you’re right about Twitter.
Russell,
I’ve used RSS for over three years now, so I guess I don’t really have a concept of how many other people use it, in what ways or how often. Maybe the deal is that it’s just now hitting a “tipping point” where enough people use it that it’s having an effect?
Octo,
Yeah, the old template was pretty (to me anyway!) but it had problems, especially in IE. I finally decided (and had time) to sit down and fix things.
Ren,
You might like tweets better if you were actually on Twitter! Not that I’m pressuring you… but a lot of people from Sex 2.0 have been wondering where you are! ;) But seriously, it’s much different reading them in real-time on Twitter than in the bulk auto-post to the blog. The reason I auto-post them to my blog, though, is that sometimes I mention stuff that I would’ve previously done a short blog post about.
Yay, this post has already gotten 5 comments! My evil plan is working… [rubs hands together maniacally]
In my case at least, it’s not a total mystery to me. I don’t write nearly as much as I used to, and even when I do, it’s not about politics nearly as often as it used to be. I think people generally expect that that’s what I’ll be writing about (or college football), and if I cared about that expectation I’d be falling down on the job.
Combine that with Twitter and RSS, and you’ve got less comments.
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