Sarah Perez says the Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere. I’m not sure if that’s true. Blogs have comments, but frankly they can be awkward vehicles for having a conversation, particularly if it is back and forth between dueling blogs. I read her article in a bit different way that is more concerning. There are now so many vehicles for conversations that she lists no less than 15 ways to keep up.
Are we really having conversations, or are we just forming small cliques around the trendy fashionable applet du jour? Twitter, FriendFeed, Social Bookmarking, Disqus, yada, yada, yada. Get enough vehicles going and there isn’t much conversation. Everyone is scatterd in small groups. Everyone is checking a million feeds or searching for the one right aggregator. And the aggregators don’t help either as they try to create sticky lock-in by not exporting their conversations ala FriendFeed.
Conversation is facilitated by common channels, not a zillion incompatible channels. If every country had dozens of incompatible cell phone standards, the value of a cellphone would be seriously diminished. Incompatibility of conversation channels is not just an attention overload problem, it’s much more insidious.
You must be logged in to post a comment.