ME and Ophelia

WILL RSS REPLACE EMAIL?
And blogs?

Sean Gallagher's post at Root Access August 19, has an eyecatching title asking if RSS will replace email. He says it will if he can help it.

It made me wonder if RSS will replace blogs. If so, would it stop search engines getting a cache of posts and images. Excerpt from Sean's post:

"What if you could store files for a project in one place, and publish an RSS feed that everyone could subscribe to--giving them access to the most recent version of any file at any time, and alerting them whenever a file was added or changed?

Well, say "what if" no more. Box.net, the personal web storage company, is now offering users the ability to share files stored in their "boxes" with others via an RSS feed. The "filefeed" service, now in beta, can distribute shared files through links in an RSS feed, so they can be accessed through any RSS reader (like NetNewsWire), an aggregation service website (like MyYahoo or Bloglines), or directly from a web browser (such as Firefox, using "Live Bookmarks")"

Note, Sean says he and a friend got so much email spam they joked about doing away with it by subscribing to each other's RSS feeds to communicate. A commenter at Sean's writes this:

"As a power RSS-user, I don't know why I didn't think of this. I'm involved with numerous development orgs working on a single end product, and the email is overwhelming and incredibly difficult to keep up with--and I have to read each one because I never know what the "latest" status is or where I need to jump into the fray. So this is a great idea as a business use.

But I could also see this as a planning tool for non-business uses, like organizing family get-togethers, parties, club or church type things, the latest bigfoot sighting....

I can't believe there's not wider spread use like this. And I work for a BIG technology company. Cool thoughts."

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Note to self: A reminder about milestones of blogging. Every three months, in the run up to 2 years, I've noticed many of us bloggers going through similar stages, phases and changes of heart towards blogging.

Blogging is not the same for me these days. Makes me feel a bit sad and disappointed. Most of my blogmates have stopped blogging or post much less often. Nowadays we all read blogs through newsfeeds and do not visit blogs in person or comment and interact as much. Not much fun anymore either. A few years ago, it was exciting and a laugh. Now the blogosphere feels cold and depersonalised, stripped of personality and passion.

Some blogs have commenting facilities that show up in my newsfeed which is a real bonus. I find it interesting to follow discussions. Makes me feel I am part of the conversation. Wish all blogs had the same feature, and that there was some way of knowing who has my blogs in their newsfeeds.

Technorati, which I treated as blogland's cyberphone network, is too slow in logging links (some take a few weeks or never to show up) - often it is either broken, too busy and too slow to use most of the time. Bloggers are not linking to other blogs in their sidebars as much anymore. I can tell through my visitor stats that regular visitors who have never linked to my blogs are reading them through a newsfeed. Whenever I post there is a flurry in traffic from familiar looking ISP's/URLs/locatiions and then it tapers off back to normal until a new post is published.

It takes 18 months to get to know any job. Maybe the same applies to blogging. By the time we bloggers approach the two year mark, we are aware of all the different visitors, strange passers by and search engines.

People, styles and interests change. Some bloggers now say they think twice about posting feelings, ins and outs of daily life, work, political views, etc. Maybe its a case of too many people in their personal space, giving a crowded-in feeling, making the blog change from personal to public. Or the experience cramps our style. Blogging is constantly changing and evolving, just like people. I have more thoughts on this but must stop now and rest.
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ON THIS DAY

On Aug. 27, 1962, the United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe, which flew past Venus the following December. [via NYT]