On the plus side, a good blogger will provide grist for conversations and a nucleus around which the community will grow. As word spreads, people with common interests may gather there from around the Internet, especially if the blog has a theme.

There are some serious drawbacks to blogs as community builders, though.

• Unequal power can disrupt the conversation. It’s the blogger’s blog, which puts the blogger in the role of moderator. Sometimes that works, but sometimes it can stifle conversations.
• Conversations become fragmented over time. As the blogger posts new entries, the conversation in the comments area has to migrate to the new entries. New input tends to drop off as the old entry cycles off the RSS feed. Compare with an e-mail discussion group, where conversation threads tend to arise and die as the community’s interest in them waxes and wanes.
• Conversations become fragmented over space. If you have a group of friends, each with his or her own blog, it can be very difficult to follow a conversation that spreads across the multiple blogs.

I plan to check out Me.dium once they have the capacity to let me in. I’ll be curious to see how well its design addresses some of these issues.

Thanks for the reference. We are a bit nerdy around Lijit and better messaging is a high priority. I really enjoyed the Scott Maxwell reference and will give it a try as we refine our messaging.

Thanks again, i love to get these kinds of comments!

I had the same thoughts as Ivan. Reading your comments, I have a better understanding. My gut says I’m still not positive about what it is that Lijit does. You may find Scott Maxwell’s post on messaging extremely valuable.

Thanks for the comment on Lijit and let me try to help out