Very well said, you give me hope. I see hits on a regular basis from people in Europe and Asia using “Google” to find things and I collect “translated” versions of my website. I’m always flattered when someone has a look at my particular corner of weird and deranged street.

Aggregators and Google are the big unknowns. Aggregators might go away if news outlets begin charging for content and Google is always shifting the way that it evaluates information–I’ve read where page rank might end up being irrelevant. Well, thank you very much, I’ve just spent two years trying to raise mine!

I would add, always remember that readers are looking at what you said months ago. If they detect that you’re a fraud and a hypocrite, they’ll call you out.

Since I’ve been blogging I think most of us have been trying to ‘make sense’ of the phenomenon. What is does and who it does it for. I don’t think there is one overarching explanation. The ‘sphere is as diverse as the people who use it.

My latest ‘insight’ is to think of comments not as ‘comments’ but as micro posts in themselves. In this way they become extensions of your blogging activity. (Inspired by Dawkins and his idea of the extended phenotype) So comments are an extended ‘memeotype’ something influenced by your blog but built beyond its confines.

Found this post at technorati. =D Clicked it and it was a pretty good read so I thought I leave a comment.

Your last point is so true. Not going to mention any names but I remember awhile back coming across what I thought was a great post/blog and then I started to notice that all the posts were controversial in nature. That was basically the style of the blog and that does get tiring after awhile.