Blogging Disaster

इंसान ब्लौगिंग करता है तरक्की करने के लिये। (Men blog to progress).

But I had made a retrograde blunder that took me months to understand and I am still not sure about the solution. The beauty(ugliness) of the problem is that I initially considered it as a forward step. Many people who would be reading this would be definitely considering it a good progressive step even now.

The step I took is.....using RSS readers.

Still not sure why I consider it retrograde?

I decided to use RSS readers because it meant not wasting time to keep track of happenings in the blogoshpere. What I was unaware of was the hidden cost associated with it.

All RSS feeds I have come across conveniently ignore the option to allow commenting from the feed itself. There is a basic theorem in cognitive psychology that says: "Out of sight...Out of mind". While I used to comment in atleast 2 blogs daily, it dropped to only 2 comments in a week, in only those places I really wanted to write.

I consider commenting an important component of blogging. Its only through exchange of thoughts that distinguishes blogging from diary writing (using pen and paper). There was another aspect to the story. I found that many people come to my blogs for the first time by clicking on the links given in my comments. So by not commenting regularly I had effectively closed way for new audience for by blogs.

By being more alert I can definitely try to compensate, but never completely.

What do you think? Any suggestions?