"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard." - Daphne du Maurier

Waypath's Steven Nieker asks blog metablog service operators: Can we all just interop?

What might this look like?

Weblog detection.

• The blogosphere is largely uncharted. The first task is finding them, and developing practices that cut time to discovery. I guess there are about three million diarists and bloggers. So even Technorati isn't identifying a fraction of the blogosphere. At least a third is outside the U.S. and we don't even know what they call weblogs in Uzbekistan.
• This may be a collaborative task, dividing up the work of pursuing leads, organizing results.

Semantics.

• Philiosophy aside, interop relies upon an explicit definition of a shared vocabulary.
• When is a blog a blog? Active, suspended, or dead? What is an archived blog page or just an ordinary web page? Wiki vs. blog?
• Who is the author? What about multiple authors? What about machine-generated weblogs?
• What about rich media like images, video, audio, flash? Qblog-like enriched data structures?
• RSS is the cautionary tale.

Functionality.

• This is a time of feature explosion and evolution. Every week we're seeing innovations in blogosphere discovery, search, navigation, analysis, visualization, integration, and user experience. It may be too early to fossilize all of this with standards.
• On the other hand, some services are mature and hot enough for a little immediate gratification.

Somewhere along the line, you have to align these projects with enlightened self interest.

What's the point?

1. The minum for metablog services will grow along with the state of the blogosphere.
2. Starting conversations about architecture. We're facing unbelievable scale problems. Lots to discuss.
3. Speeding up evolution despite pressure to productize and scale.   

What have you learned that is really new?

Where is your own blog? {from the chat room: "He has a blog, but his daughter hasn't gotten home for the summer yet."}

Why does Always On call a user post "a blog"? Isn't what you're doing just a magazine with comments?

Blogs don't have editorial review. But you reserve the right to yank user posts. "Blatant promotions and advertisments will be removed by the editors and violators suspended." How do you define blatant? Who are the editors? What are their names? How do you appeal? Will you delete for other forms of content that offends you? How about criticism of your advertisers?

Who owns the posts on your site? Will you compensate posters as you pull in the wealth? 

You call AO the insiders' network. Insiders' to what?

Does the blogspace axiom "You Own Your Words" make any legal sense?

What does European law say about blog ownership?

What license might be acceptable to an employer that would let an employee also preserve some rights in a blog? The ability to compile a book? The non-exclusive right to publish the blog from elsewhere? A clear definition of proprietary that doesn't include every thought written down? Using a Creative Commons approach, what are the big tradeoffs?

If I post to my personal blog from work, can my employer claim ownership?

Who owns the comments on my blog?

If my blog is HR compliant, but I link to unsanitary places (Rageboy with offensive language, for example), is that creating a hostile workplace?

Blogs are more candid than other sources of intranet information. During mergers and acquisitions, when do you share your intranet blogs?