I've been blogging away over on Blogonaut trying to keep up with the BIT320 Blogosphere. We've hit the stage of the term where all it seems like I do is work just to keep up.
We've made some changes to the blogosphere. Specifically, we have a snapshot view of the most recent four days worth of posts. That really seemed a requirement. I have a few ideas about what we would do differently next time.
For one, it is clear to me that there are multiple modes of interacting with the content. Andy Seidl advocates using a newsreader. I more or less agree with this position, but newsreaders have not become mainstream just yet. Further, I'm not sure that the newsreader model has really solidified. What I think is quite likely to happen on this front is that the newsreader will incorporate into the browser.
In this regard, I think Firefox's live bookmarks may be pointing the way. The live bookmarks feature allows you to see what the new headlines are on the site and then click through to the actual web page. Now, live bookmarks need a lot of work, but this notion of clicking through to the actual page vs. going some XML stream that you then render based on your own style sheet (the standard newsreader model) makes a lot of sense to me.
This basic “click-headline-see-web-page model” solves a few problems. First is advertising. No need to try to advertise in the RSS feed if the person is going to be driven to your site. The second is image management. As much as we would like to say that form should be separated from content (a veritable mantra in the XML world), for people form frequently defines interpretation of content. Further, people put a lot of work into getting their form in shape as part of their whole expressive effort. Take this ability away, and I think you lose some of their individuality. Viewing the actual web page then is in essence more informative.
Where live bookmarks lose out is in feed management. The bookmarks seem to update on a to say the least ersatz schedule. You cannot sort them according to category or see a list of headlines based on groups of feeds. All of this may be fixed eventually, but until that happens, live bookmarks will remain more of a curio than a useful feature.
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