Whither comments in a world of RSS?

Tim finally publishes his thoughts on the interaction of RSS and commenting on blogs. Namely that the more RSS and its analogues (e.g. Atom) are used to “consume” blogs the less one is inclined to comment directly on the blog being read. A quick skim and if it’s interesing a link from your own blog to it. Thus Tim asserts a “death of comments” theology, so to speak. See SansBlogue : Web 2.0 and the Evils of RSS. (I’m sure I’ve talked to him about this before but it’s nice to see him put it down in some concrete form.)

One of the things that initially attracted me to blogging, both as an author and reader, was the interaction based around comments and trackbacks. Now spam dealt to the trackbacks on this blog but the comments are still there because I think it’s important for the opportunity to add another voice to be there. But with the advent of RSS aggregation I think that’s a thing of the past – so many blogs, so little time. Software such as Carnglas Software’s iFeedPod only increased the point of aggregation being getting the information/data down to me not creating a two-way or multi-way network.

Personally, I think things like RSS are brilliant at getting subscriptions to content like news and podcasts, but I’m still not convinced that it’s the best way to read blogs. There’s something about going to the front page of a blog and seeing what else has changed (comments, polls etc) apart from just the next post.

Anyway, over to Tim’s blog to post a comment…