It’s not a big deal, but I’ve been bugged the last few weeks by the inability to comment on Seth Godin’s blog. Seth is a very smart marketer and a keen observer of Web 2.0’s participatory ethos. So I’m confused by his decision to not permit comments. Perhaps someone out there can explain it to me…I’m eager to understand his choice.
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From page 29-30 of http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/whos_there.pdf,
“My blog doesn’t have comments though. There are two reasons for this. The first, which is childish, is that I hate reading angry rants about my ideas… The other reason, more practical, is that we now live in a world where many people have blogs. So if you’ve got something you want to say about one of my ideas, go ahead and trackback it and put it on…
Or could be a combination of proacticality (he would get so many comments it would take a long time to moderate), Laziness (face it, we all have lots to do but some of us do develop systems to deal with volume) and control (He likely wants to control the message)
The guy loves to create idea viruses. Viri? Virusi? uhh, more than one virus.
I spent way too much time contemplating this once because I figured there had to be explicit reasoning behind this decision. The beauty (or really ugly part depending on your perspective) of a virus is that it spreads. It doesn’t stay in one place. If all of the comments were made to his blog, then those are a bunch of sneezes in the same corner of the blogosphere.
Now, if people talk about it on their blog… then someone talks about it on theirs… and another, and another, etc. Then it spreads farther, wider, faster.
If your ideas are powerful enough… this may be the way to go. I haven’t gotten there yet.
Very popular bloggers aren’t necessarily interested in reading other blogger’s posts. They don’t want to respond to everyone who writes, as they have enough going on. New bloggers like the recognition; they are trying to get links and increase their readership. Seth Godin doesn’t need any help!