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My first motivation? I wanted to wrap my brain around what Google sees as worth so many millions.
What a hoot this is - I feel like I did when I first came online. You know, before everything turned into "business". I'm checking out this niche and that, hopping from link to link and site to site. And in general, I'm thoroughly enjoying the exploration of this (for me) new world.
One thing I appreciate can be summed up in the word "reputation". I'm lucky to have a few friends who are already blogging, so I trust what their weblogs say. In other words, they've got a good reputation with me. So whatever they link to also has a decent reputation. It's friend of a friend, you know, one degree of separation.
Another benefit is that I'm becoming less dependent on mass media for my web experience, whether that be Google, Microsoft or the BBC.
With the media control and commercial dominance dialed way down, I'm having fun again on the web. And of couse, the WebmasterWorld RSS feed is on my reader, keeping me in touch with our Home Page as I never have been before.
I would love to see someone start doing a daily audio or video blog... I think that would be cool.
to me the citation-based indexing of things like daypop, blogdex and an increasing number of "me-too's" and to be fair value added extensions of the idea reflect the decentralized nature of the www as it was designed. Opinions get reputation not based on how much money a media giant will pur into it for commercial motives, but the credibility earned though many months of posting gos substantive stuff.
Im really glad you tried this experience and welcome aboard to the world of new journalism, blogs and the like..!
Its easy to fault blogs as a whole for the mass amount of crud, narcissm, college-level US-oriented humour, cat-blogs, and crude unsophisticated attempts to shock, but the cream does rise to the top. Its a great example of real substance being rewarded. daypop and blogdex type indexes are the PR of the content and news Web.
As ive said before I think it is a new form of journalism. It wont replace traditional journalism of course, but it provides a viable new thread in journalism, and most importantly - keeps the bastards honest.
Hits to our RSS feed files (we have 3 now) now almost double the 3 related index pages. Our main concern now is that we are losing the first mover advantage as others find out how useful RSS syndication is for distributing content...
C'est la vie!
And as you say so well, its also fun!
Presonally we came to RSS through other syndication methods first of all via producing summary files for Pointcast, and then Netscape cdf in My netscape, and then through Dave Winers pioneering work with RSS and indexing recently updated blogs and news sites.
RSS really came into its own however when blogging tools like MT, Greymatter, and Radio plus content management tools like nuke and the clones plus other perl/php/asp based tools offered the functionality of automatically producing rss files of the latest content.
We saw the number of reviewed publically available rss feeds on syndic8 rise from the first celebrated target of 500, to now well over 5,000 last time I seriously looked and possibly approaching 10,000 now, in little over a year or so.
Also at the same time, we have seen some dysfunctionality and some inevitable spam creep in - in the form of headlines that only link to a registration page, multiple headlines that link to one page with small anchored items, and headlines in some news sites that links to pages with the actual news item copy making up say only 2% or so of the page - the majority being ads and the like.
To some extent the ease at which is now possible to create RSS files and index them, means that a lot of sub-standard content is RSS'ified. In some cases like in nuke sites, the site creator is not even aware they are creating RSS files.
When we started using RSS files, every 2 to 3 days we created a RSS file manually, which caused good discipline in making sure that the description and content was top class. At present the problem is that it is far too easy to make a RSS file automatically, while it still remains far more difficult as ever to actually create good content! You cant really automate the creative process of witing a good article.
Thats where reputation indexes (blogdex and daypop and popdex etc) and a review process for indexing rss files (syndic8, newsisfree etc) is so important to at least reduce the level of spam that the casual user is exposed to.
That way we can keep the Joy of Surfing (almost) as much fun as Alex Comfort's namesake...
Its easy to fault blogs as a whole for the mass amount of crud, narcissm, college-level US-oriented humour, cat-blogs, and crude unsophisticated attempts to shock, but the cream does rise to the top.
The same could be said for sites on geocities and similar - and it has been said, I believe. And yet, I feel, this is somehow a good and human thing. We don't always and only speak of profound matters offline, and we don't online either.
But if I know that a blogger has interests in java development, playing jazz on his new Yamaha synthesizer, and growing Ayurvedic herbs in his kitchen, somehow each area enriches my appreciation of him as a person -- and the herbs and the jazz actually add value to his programming observations.
