There seem to be two blogging camps—bloggers who allow comments at their sites and bloggers who don’t. Tom has always welcomed the opportunity to participate in conversation with his readers. For some bloggers, the drawbacks to maintaining the conversation outweigh the benefits, and they decide against using that feature. Jason Kottke is one of them. His audience, however, decided that what they had to say was too important to keep to themselves. Biz Stone, author of Who Let the Blogs Out (a great beginner’s guide to blogging), pointed out the Kottke readers’ site: Kottke Komments. They republish Kottke’s posts and enable comments. This is a fascinating development in that we’ve been hearing so much about people creating websites to discuss their favorite products or brands, and now it seems a bit like the camera is being aimed at the photographer. How will this affect Kottke’s blog? Will readership decline? What if a decline in readership of the original blog impacts ad revenue? If this new site is successful, would it inspire Kottke to try to take control of the situation by opening comments at his blog? Here at tompeters.com, we’re familiar with the challenges of maintaining a comment feature, and so respect a blogger’s choice on the matter. That said, what do you think?
