Blogs introduced the conversational web, and sure, @Fix Usenet its not perfect but neither is MySpace/Facebook/network de jour.

The evolution is the interesting part, and CoComment for example was an attempt to address the shortcomings, although it got no traction. Its almost like we need the next RSS.

Nice post btw!

New media incorporate the old and the old incorporate the new. Usenet threads are somewhat wiki-like, non? The telegraph became the newspaper. The book became the film. The TV becomes the web. VJ’s the new DJ’s redux. The tetrad operates simultaneously, less a product life-cycle.

Me thinks blogs carry our individual memes in the electronic mind. The residual individual as a thread web co-creator. Conversations represent social tribes and tribalism. Tribes negate residual individuals as unnecessary ‘I’s’ in place of ‘we’. Leaders always assume they’re the ‘we’ in tribes.

Each medium has its own intrinsic merit. Independent thinking and expressing – shoebox ‘pulpits’ (liberal/conservative blogs, etc), whilst building consensus around shared roles (those democratic compromises for social media to work). Flag this content as (in)appropriate…

Conversations are ’speech-based’ anyway, since text is more about exchanging the doctrinal syntax of ‘the printed word’. Hence, with instant IM you get ‘chat’ and gesture as the effect, not typed text. ;-O

What’s concerning is that blogging will be ‘dead media’ as well as ‘wikis’, and all bygone embodiments of electronic texts when we don’t bother using the ‘alphabet-as-text’ anyway — when opting instead for instant ’speech-based’ and/or image-based dialog. That’s just an iphone, away and/or a google voicemail, flickring fast…

The question is, given .that we want to build a messaging/conversation system, why aren’t we asking ‘What is wrong with Usenet’ or ‘What is wrong with mailing lists’ and trying to build on that, instead of taking RSS (which wasn’t designed to do this) and tacking on some kludge.
I know, I know, Usenet and email are not the new hotness like RSS is but they were designed to do pretty much what people want to do.
I’ll take tried and true over new and shiny any day.

In fact, what advantage does RSS have over a mailing list that only lets the owner post the first message? Using e-mail would consolidate messaging and you would be able to take advantage of its filtering, sorting and delivery mechanisms.

P.S. CoComment is a frightening solution to the problem.

Blogs introduced the conversational web, and sure, @Fix Usenet its not perfect but neither is MySpace/Facebook/network de jour.

The evolution is the interesting part, and CoComment for example was an attempt to address the shortcomings, although it got no traction. Its almost like we need the next RSS.

Nice post btw!

rss + comment integration is profoundly broken. And as we all shift to consuming blog by rss it matters even more. comments get lost in the shuffle.

Sure, if we all have blogs, we can all shout to each other from our pulpits. But that’s hardly ideal.

I don’t think usenet such as it is (was) is the answer, but it had some/many subtle merits.

the post-blog, as it obsolesces blogs, should retrieve what was lost in usenet, in terms of coherent, centralized discourse.

* I should have said a step forward from the graphical web/http publishing of the 90s, I wasn’t even considering usenet in the comparison (but should have).

You’re basis of comparison is off. You should be comparing blogs as a communication platform to Usenet or possibly mailing lists.

This entire blogging + comments system is ridiculous; simultaneously a step *backwards* and widely touted as a brilliant innovation.

It’s mostly fine for one-way communication but that is not enough for the majority of cases.

Tracking a discussion on ‘blogs’ is a nightmare.
There is no unified way to respond (comment) through RSS. I have to go to *every* sites custom web form to do so.
Commenting implementation (if it exists) are inconsistent. Comments often have no threading (and if they did it RSS wouldn’t be able to handle it). Even if there is an RSS feed for comments they must be added manually and are not tied to the original post. When there is no RSS (often the case) I can’t be bothered to go to the websites of the plethora of blogs I track.

Usenet is far from perfect (even far from good), but people
should have recognized what they were trying to do (communication forum) and learned from Usenet, building on it or fixing it, instead of all these ugly hacks on RSS, which was not meant to do what people want to do today. Whatever people come up with to solve the RSS comments problem is just going to be another ugly hack (proclaimed to be revolutionary solution).