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Virginia Political Blog Aggregators

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James A. Bacon
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Tracking Virginia political bloggers has just gotten easier. I’m a little slow getting to this, but those who are only occasional blog readers may find this to be news: Now there are two excellent aggregators of Virginia political blogs: Virginia Political Blogs and BlogNetNews.com.

Virginia Political Blogs is the handiwork of Virginia blog pioneer Waldo Jaquith. It was the first Virginia blog aggregator and, as such, is a sentimental favorite among other long-time Virginia bloggers. At this point in time, Waldo aggregates roughly 125 blogs.

The newbie on the scene is the Virginia page of BlogNetNews.com. The aggregator, according to Dave Mastio, has just added its 126th blog – ditzydemocrats. It also has some potentially cool features, such as listings of most linked-to stories in the MSM, most commented-upon blog posts, most active blogs, and most linked-to blogs.

The Virginia political blogosphere is getting so big that it’s getting a bit unwieldy — 125 blogs is more than I want to follow. The next step in the evolution of the blogosphere would be a capability that allows subscribers to select the blogs that go into their own customized aggregator. I suspect that a goodly number of people would be willing to pay a modest subscription — say $4 to $5 per month — for such a service. With luck, it’s already under development!

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10 responses to “Virginia Political Blog Aggregators”

  1. Jason Kenney Avatar
    Jason Kenney

    I think the marketability of any package like that is limited because of the vast number of online aggrigators one can use for personal reading, like bloglines.com or even the Google reader.

  2. RedBull Avatar
    RedBull

    Yeah, and google may have a problem with trying to repackage a service that is free…..but you never know!

  3. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    Thanks for the plug, Jim.

  4. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    You can always export the entire list as OPML (here’s the link from from Virginia Political Blogs — I can’t find one immediately on BlogNetNews.com) and import the blogs that you like into your aggregator of choice.

    By way of explanation, OMPL is nothing more than an XML-based list. In this case, I’m using OPML to provide a list of every included feed. Most RSS readers will accept OPML files to automagically import subscription listings.

    Here’s hoping we get a third or a fourth aggregator. 🙂 Competition is a wonderfully healthy thing.

  5. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    I think two aggregators is a fine number for Virgininia along with some fine local ones live RVAblogs.com. I’m not going to go begging for more competition.

    The real question for the future of aggregators is whether they’re going to republish whole posts or partial posts and what that means for traffic to the individual blogs. My thought, maybe hope, is that aggregators will see themselves as institutions with a responsibility to help build the traffic of blogs by leaving an incentive to go to the blog to read the whole post.

    Waldo’s been at this longer than I have so maybe he has thought it through more.

  6. MaxPower Avatar
    MaxPower

    I think there is room for some sort of subscription based service provided by aggregators. We’ve been toying with the idea over at RVABlogs.com for a while now.

    I think there are definitely somethings you could provide to blog readers and then a different set of things to provide to blog writers. If you got enough small services together as a package I think you could probably sell it for, like Jim said, 5$/mo. Maybe a little less.

    If there are any RVABlogs readers out there interested in some possible subscription features, let me know: ross [at] pharrout [dot] com.

  7. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    My thought, maybe hope, is that aggregators will see themselves as institutions with a responsibility to help build the traffic of blogs by leaving an incentive to go to the blog to read the whole post.

    As a long-time mail server administrator, I subscribe to the standing theory that it is the job of anybody running a network (like an aggregator) to leave the packet of information alone, and to present data as close to the form intend by its creator as is practicable. In the case of an RSS feed, that means presenting all information that the blogger has chosen to syndicate. If a blogger wants to have only an extract of their blog entries syndicated (as many prominent blogs choose to do, such as Talking Points Memo), they need only check off the box in their blogging software to make it so.

    In this manner, the blog entries are syndicated as the blogger chooses to have them syndicated. Everybody wins. 🙂

  8. MaxPower Avatar
    MaxPower

    In the case of an RSS feed, that means presenting all information that the blogger has chosen to syndicate.

    I see what you are saying, but don’t agree. First a lot of bloggers are not that tech-aware. I know a ton of people on RVABlogs have no idea what an RSS feed is and only have one because Blogger has it turned on by default. Second, places like Blogger don’t really give you a lot of RSS formating options. I think blogger just gives you “short” and “long” or something like that. So if you want the first 600 characters plus the first picture, you are out of luck. And finally, as a guy working in webdesign and development standardizing content (ie. post length and format) does wonders for readability and usability.

  9. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    First a lot of bloggers are not that tech-aware. I know a ton of people on RVABlogs have no idea what an RSS feed is and only have one because Blogger has it turned on by default.

    I guess they’d figure it out real quick once they saw their site being aggregated. 🙂

    Second, places like Blogger don’t really give you a lot of RSS formating options. I think blogger just gives you “short” and “long” or something like that.

    Cool — then they’d want to go for the “short” option. That gives the blogger the control over their blog entries appearance, rather than surrendering it. The alternative is for each blogger to get in touch with every aggregator out there — from Technorati on down — and ask that they shorten the length of the content being syndicated from the blog in question. Clearly it’s a great deal simpler to simply syndicate the content in the format that you want it to appear.

    As an overarching standard, it’s a great deal more presumptuous to edit somebody’s writing than it is to leave it alone. When the simple technology exists (such as a “short or long” toggle) to permit content creators to take control of their own syndication, I believe it’s generally better to defer to those creators.

    Fortunately, it’s not exactly a life-or-death issue. 🙂 Intelligent minds may disagree on the matter and nothing terrible will happen. 🙂

  10. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I heard on the radio this morning that political blogs are only 11% of the blogosphere.

    Pretty much matches the percentage of people that vote, doesn’t it?

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