Joel Burslem, writing from The Future of Real Estate Marketing, a multi-author weblog, this past week posted an extended complaint about multi-author weblogs.
Okayfine. It struck me as a beef about form over substance, but — what the heck? — there’s no accounting for taste.
The one kvetch that is surely valid is this:
I’d love to be able just to get Mike Arrington’s perspective on TC or Marshall Kirkpatrick’s posts from RWW or Pete Cashmore’s contributions to Mashable for example and cut out all the rest.
To use a (loose) analogy – I’d liken many multi-author blogs right now to my local cable company. They’re bundling an awful lot of channels in my cable package that I don’t want.
One thing that would help if more multi-author blogs feeds aped the a la carte cable model (which is sadly lacking right now too), or like podcast subscriptions in iTunes. These blogs ought to clearly let me pick and choose the authors I want and bundle a unique feed for me based on my selections – not just stuff everything down a pipe at me.
This is actually easily done in WordPress, and it’s something I’ve thought about doing for a long time.
And today is that day. It’s been possible for a long time to get a BloodhoundBlog author’s archive of posts by clicking on that author’s picture. Beautiful people like Kris Berg, Cathleen Collins and Dan Green are consistent beneficiaries of this feature. That would seem to suggest that the feature is being discovered mostly by accident of impulse, so now, in any particular post and in the Frequent Contributors section of the sidebar, “Post Archive” and “RSS Feed” are also supported by text links.
From my point of view, anyone who would subscribe to a Michael Arrington feed and skip Duncan Riley doesn’t get technology, but the essence of capitalism is that each of us should be able to have exactly what we want and nothing else.
In the mean time, we will continue to grow — in contributors, in scope, in importance, in reach, in influence. As with the best of group weblogs in the larger enblogged globe, the synergy of the people writing together here makes all of us better bloggers.
Do you disagree? There’s no accounting for taste, so now you can cherry-pick your favorite BloodhoundBloggers and ignore the rest.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Todd Carpenter says:
That post got me thinking as well. However, I liked Drew Meyers idea to create an author specific feed that spanned all blogs they contribute to. I post to lenderama, Blog Fiesta, Inman, Denver Modern Homes, Brainious, Active Rain, Realty Blogging, CoRE, and the Real Estate Weenie. Maybe my mom would be the only one to read me, but I’ve been looking into the best way to combine them anyway. Yahoo Pipes is likely going to be the best option.
October 29, 2007 — 1:00 am
Bince says:
As an official lurker, I thought I would leave a comment – your site is very well organized and I enjoy visiting, however I have not been able to figure out the RSS feed component in a manner that would allow me to take advantage of all the links and labels on the site. Thanks for making it available nonetheless – I think I would prefer visiting the site directly when I am able to – thanks!
October 29, 2007 — 3:41 am
Steven Groves says:
I read that post by Joel as well – not sure I agreed with him. The multi-author blog is a godsend to a busy professional and a brokerage.
I’ve seen it used to good effect by many. Have to ask him about it when he comes next to Phoenix week…
October 29, 2007 — 7:38 am
Kris Berg says:
Dang, this means I should probably post something just in case someone subscribes to my feed by “accident of impulse.” I’m all over it (tomorrow).
October 29, 2007 — 9:08 am
Drew Meyers from Zillow says:
I’m betting some savvy developer will figure out a way to create a single author RSS feed that spans multiple blogs — MyBlogLog should be the one doing this since they already have that information.
October 29, 2007 — 11:19 am
Greg Swann says:
It’s already done. There are WordPress plug-ins to do it, but the XML of this is duck soup anywhere. If you have feed addresses, you can mix and match them however you like.
October 29, 2007 — 11:22 am
Drew Meyers from Zillow says:
Greg-
Do you happen to know if blogs that use Feedburner can use this same technical solution that you did?
I just used the same URL structure of “wp-rss2.php?author=3” on Geekestate and it re-directed me to the feedburner feed.
October 29, 2007 — 11:47 am
Greg Swann says:
Sorry. I don’t know anything about Feedburner.
October 29, 2007 — 11:48 am
Lani Anglin says:
Greg, thanks for doing this- I’ve had people ask me before if this feature was possible for bloodhound (and of course I said “uhh….”).
For the rest of y’all- don’t forget to subscribe to my articles… Lani Anglin ’08!!! 😉 ha ha
October 29, 2007 — 2:11 pm
Greg Swann says:
> For the rest of y’all- don’t forget to subscribe to my articles…
And: A URL is just a URL. You can invite readers at RErevealed to subscribe to your BHB feed.
October 29, 2007 — 4:58 pm
Todd Carpenter says:
Drew, are you running that WP plugin that directs all of your RSS traffic to feedburner? That might be causing the problem.
October 29, 2007 — 5:37 pm
Drew Meyers from Zillow says:
Todd-
Yup – I am. If readers start requesting this feature on geekestate, I’ll figure out how to accommodate the request.
October 30, 2007 — 3:25 pm