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If blogging is a conversation

Fred Oliveira on August 23, 2006 Comments (3)

… people need to be able to speak. One of the biggest issues I have with some of the blogs out there is that they just don’t make it easy for people to voice their opinion. Take a look at Bizinformer, for example. They’ve been in my reading list for a while, but I’ve never left a comment on their blog – and judging by their numbers, not many people have.

Reason being, they make it too hard. There’s 3 forms below the story, plus a voting system and some ads. I mean, can I get to the part where I say what I think? All I need is a text area and a submit button, and that’s it. Not that they don’t have it, its just buried between star ratings, related entries, “blog this at your site”, and “email this to your friends” widgets. Oh, come on.

Now, even though I’m using Bizinformer as an example (because I just happened to read one of their stories), this sort of frustration is common in the blogosphere. There are loads of blogs who, eager to take their content distribution to new heights, fill up their pages with bulky forms, tons of imagery or ads, and make it a hell of a mess for people who just want to say “I disagree”. Usability doesn’t just apply to applications or portals.

If blogging is a conversation, stop gluing our mouths and taping our lips.

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Comments on this post

Jason Manheim

I think the majority of people automatically go into frankenstien mode… “must have people,” when they design the blog layout. It’s easy to get carried away with cool functionality and forget to ask “what would I want, what do I need, what can I do without?”

Javier

And nevermind the blogs where a perfect valid and respectful comment gets censored out :( happened to me recently.

Hugo

But that’s not the only problem, if blogging is a conversation, and bloggers have their email or other email for contact on their blogs, they must answer to every email they get, even with a simple answer, like a “thank you for your email”. I think that the bloggers must pay attention to this kind of relation with their readers, otherwise they could lost them, and who knows get bad promotion.

Something to say?