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by Eric Gunnerson.
Original Post: Group Blogs
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I am interested in your comment about not subscribing to group blogs. Why? Isn't it a good way to discover new blogs worth reading? Just curious...
I think it's important to differentiate between two types of blogs. The terms I use (which may or may not be generally accepted) are:
Aggregated blog
A blog that aggregates together the blogs of separate people, presenting them on one feed.
Group blog
A blog with posts written by several people.
I think aggregated blogs are okay, though I tend to read them on their web page to find out what I like rather than subscribe to them. They do tend to be pretty noisy, especially when there are a number of new bloggers, but if you can get by that, there may be some good people to subscribe to.
Group blogs are a different beast. In them, a group of people write articles for the same blog. ABlog is one, and there are a few that are run by Microsoft teams.
I don't think I've come across one yet that was any good. I read a blog to get a specific person's perspective, not to get the jumbled-together perspectives of a group of people. Group blogs also lack coherence, and most they are normally one-way.
In my mind, one of the points of having a blog is to engage in conversation. I read every comment that gets made on my blog. Sometimes I reply, sometimes I comment, sometimes I write a new blog entry. Sometimes I don't do anything, but the comment still effects what I do in the future.
That's because I have a sense of ownership around it, because it's *my* blog. It's just human nature to care more about something that has your name on it than something that has your team's name on it.
The C# team actually has a group blog for FAQ questions. It's much better than not getting that information out at all, but it has neither the personality nor the interaction of a personal blog. That's okay if it's an *adjunct* to other blogs, but not if it's the only one for a team. I'd read a general Apress blog devoted to new releases even if it were a group blog, because it would have a different goal.
My advice to everybody doing group blogs is to do aggregated blogs instead. Sure, it's more work, but the result is so much better.
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