following online conversations is hard work!

jeremy zawdony thinks that getting "involved" in blogs is the easy part. what's not so easy is the finding and subsequent monitoring of those blogs to which you have contributed. he believes that blog aggregators such do a poor job of making this easy: -

Aggregators do a poor job of making this easy. The blog search "verticals" aren't helpful either. They suffer from any number of real or perceived problems: slow and unstable (Technorati), incomplete (Google), contain lame advertising (Feedster), or are impossible for normal people to understand (PubSub).

and that simply subscribing to topical blogs via RSS/atom feeds don't help to manage the flow of information: -

Most aggregators make it so easy to subscribe (once you figure out how) that self-inflicted overload soon follows. You find yourself spending far too much time trying to "unbold" the folders of news on your desktop. The aggregator does little to help manage the flow of information, show you what really matters to you, and hide the stuff that's not important.

he also believes that every aggregator fails to make it easy to stay engaged in a discussion: -

It took me a while to figure this out, but every aggregator I've seen has completely fails to make it easy to stay engaged in a discussion taking place in comments on one or more blog posts. I typically comment on a blog post and never remember to go back to see if anyone else commented on what I said. That's not much of a "conversation," is it?

what follow on from his remarks are quite a few insightful snippets from bloggers who are equally concerned about the flow of information and offer some helpful advice. what's interesting is the passion with which bloggers seem to want to track their conversations and to be part of a dialogue.

you can read the full post here.