Shyftr and blogonomics
A new blog aggregator called Shyftr has been causing quite a lot of controversy in the blogosphere, for two reasons. One is that they’re republishing people’s RSS feeds on their own site. All other aggregators that I’ve seen just republish headlines and excerpts. However, if you really want people to come to your site, you can always publish an annoying partial RSS feed. The real controversy about Shyftr is that it’s hosting comments on blog posts on its own site. The blog conversation thus becomes fractured, and blog authors may find it difficult to track comments on their own posts.
In terms of blogonomics, I think this is probably a bad thing. A big part of the value of popular blogs is the conversations in the comments. If the conversations are fractured, the value is reduced, and probably by a disproportionate amount (20 comments all together is more valuable than 10 comments on one site and 10 comments on another). Also, receiving comments is one of the big motivations for writing a blog in the first place. If reading comments becomes a hassle, bloggers will put less effort into blogging and some may drop out all together.
Personally, I’m in favour of aggregators that spread my content, but I would like to keep control of my comments. So I’d be happier if Shyftr sent readers back to the original blog sites to make comments. Shyftr can then capture the comments RSS feeds and aggregate those alongside the post feeds. Maybe this would make everyone happier.
Some other blog posts on this topic:
See also Felix Salmon on ad network valuations.
