Let’s Get The Comments Started

I was reading a couple back-articles on one of my favorite blogs, A VC, today, and I came across this discussion about rich comment threads:

But if the author of the news story, or opinion piece, or blog post, tends to the comments, replies to the good ones, signals the bad ones, chastises the loudmouth bullies, and generally runs the comment threads like a serious discussion group, a serious discussion will result.feedproxy.google.com, A VC, Jul 2009

A VC has a very interesting set of readers, and the comments that follow every blog post are almost as good as the post itself.  I was reflecting on how little commentary I get on Pittsburgh Ventures, and certainly a big part of that is due to the fact that I haven’t written anything that really stirs the hornet’s nest yet.  But I would encourage all of you who read this to start firing some shots – let’s ramp up the comments.  If FeedBurner is to be believed, we have something like ~200 readers of PV, so sound out.

I thought the best topic to sound out about is one that combines my last post and this one – WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BLOG TO READ, AND HOW DO YOU READ IT? Directly on the site, via a specific reader (which one?  I use FEEDLY and love it), how often do you read it?  This should help some of the RSS newbies my first article was directed toward.

Please show some comment love.  More hornet’s nest stirring coming, I promise.

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Comments (12)

  1. John R. Carman wrote::

    I started using Feedly a few months ago, but lately I’ve gone back to reading blogs directly in Google Reader. When catching up, I tend to read through all of the posts in a blog before moving onto the next, and I like that Google displays my total number of unread items.

    Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 9:47 am #
  2. Vibhav Sreekanti wrote::

    It’s really hard to pinpoint one blog, but a few favorites include:
    avc.com
    daringfireball.net
    codinghorror.com
    joelonsoftware.com

    I don’t use an RSS Reader. I’ve tried Google Reader but always fell behind. Instead I just follow all of the blogs/authors on Twitter. Works out well for me.

    Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 1:43 pm #
  3. Alan Veeck wrote::

    Thanks, fellas – John, give up those favorite blogs!

    Vibhav – good to hear from you – I think Twitter is the new real-time RSS feed – a topic for a future post/discussion. Nothing beats filtered content. I would say my time is now split 70:30 Twitter:Feedly.

    Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 3:00 pm #
  4. Mike Figliuolo wrote::

    I have the good old RSS set up but that’s for my idle time (translation: I don’t feel like working now so I’ll read some blogs time). For the ones I really love reading I actually get them delivered to my email via feedburner or feedblitz (depends on what the blogger has set up). If you have the honor of landing in my inbox, you write really good stuff. Two of my faves are copyblogger.com and chrisbrogan.com.

    Many of our blogs readers subscribe via feedburner (our chosen email service). The rest are mostly reading via Google reader. A distant third are Outlook, My Yahoo and Newsgator.

    Hope that helps. Happy to share stats sometime if you like.

    Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 3:13 pm #
  5. Vibhav Sreekanti wrote::

    Alan, I completely agree. It’s appeal goes further: not only does it replace traditional RSS sources such as blogs, newspapers, magazines, etc., but also the social life stream content. And by combing the two, it saves time! Instead of checking NY Times, TechCrunch, Facebook, and so on, I just log onto Twitter.

    Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 7:07 pm #
  6. Nick Pinkston wrote::

    I know from my personal blog that the comments are far more interesting than what I write…

    As far as favorite blogs:
    Hacker News
    Paul Graham: Essays
    KurzweilAI
    TechDirt

    I have to admit though, I’ve migrated mostly to following the links post on Twitter. That’s probably because I don’t have the 2 hours a day to keep up with my feedreader.

    Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 9:44 am #
  7. MattH wrote::

    Hey Alan, I must admit I am not the prototypical follower of all things web. No twitter at all, no hacker news despite having been in YC, and read blogs once per 3-4 days. I’ve got about 35 blogs in my Google Reader but I definitely hit overwhelm about a year ago and now I rate limit myself. I think it’s both to get more done and to keep out the groupthink of the Silicon Valley echo chamber. I personally feel like the intense liquidity of information flow leads to lots of chasing incremental gains as opposed to thinking new and clean slate. Anyway, to your point, my standard 3rd or 4th day procedure will be scanning the title lines of what’s in my reader, giving TC a whirl for about 10-15 minutes just so I get overviews and don’t miss anything, and then reading something more humorous just for the entertainment value (favorite being Dating A Banker Anonymous, close second Perez). Also, I don’t think I have ever commented on a blog, so you could be my first :)

    Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 2:15 pm #
  8. Alan Veeck wrote::

    Thanks for making this comment your first, Matt – glad to have you on record.

    Interesting that several have now commented on Twitter being primary information source now; I can’t disagree.

    Nick – you and I have had this conversation before, but I like seeing what you read and it always gives me some new sources of information – like TechDirt. The next logical step in RSS is social/sharing, and that seems to be the way Google is going by opening the Reader API.

    Anyone else out there doing good old fashioned RSS?

    Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 4:19 pm #
  9. Matt Corgan wrote::

    I’m still using good old Google Reader (which is blazingly fast in Chrome… try it). I generally don’t care about catching breaking headlines in the first 3 minutes, so the 1 to 3 hour delay is fine, even welcome as it keeps me from checking for new stuff every 5 minutes.

    Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 4:56 pm #
  10. Alan Veeck wrote::

    Matt – no Twitter for you? And how about your faves?

    Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 6:39 pm #
  11. Aaron Tainter wrote::

    I have tried most of the feed readers and Netvibes is still my favorite.

    In addition to Netvibes, I have TweetDeck running in the background. Twitter is a great source for finding new information that is vetted by trusted sources.

    My top 3 blogs right now – Wired, Mashable, and ReadWriteWeb

    Monday, August 3, 2009 at 7:33 am #
  12. Woy wrote::

    My reader of choice used to be NetNewsWire, until Google Reader finally came of age and now it’s what I use predominantly.

    For work I follow many of the aforementioned blogs (A VC, Mashable, ReadWriteNews). I also follow Webware and many company blogs (Google, etc.) to keep up with what’s going on with the businesses – as well as to see how they are engaging social media. Also read Lessons Learned. High Scalability is a must read for tech peeps in startups.

    Predominantly most of my reading of blogs is recreational/entertainment. I read lots of Pittsburgh blogs (of course), personal productivity blogs (even though I should practice more what they preach), and technology blogs. A must out of those? Geekologie.

    (I agree with Nick and Aaron – I’ve found Twitter to yield lots of interesting links.)

    Monday, August 3, 2009 at 8:46 am #