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I recently asked Why do you blog?, inquiring about why people create content using the various tools available to them. The comments I received were pretty much what I expected, but that's largely because the commenters were mostly people I knew. If you haven't yet answered that question, do please leave a comment on that post: I am genuinely interested in learning why people use the various tools they use.

For example, I recently met someone who uses Twitter exclusively. She has no blog of her own, and isn't overly interested in obtaining one. The conversational nature of micro-blogging services like Twitter fit her style much more comfortably. She also observed that the immediacy of Twitter was a much bigger draw than the comparatively sluggish cycle associated with blogging.

Creating new, (ostensibly) original content on your website, or Facebook, or wherever, is one thing, and it takes a level of intentionality that I think many die-hard bloggers have begun to take for granted. But there's another kind of content one can create, and that's a comment on someone else's blog.

I try to regularly comment on my friends' blogs. I do this mostly because I want to maintain that connection of friendship, but also because I want to encourage them to reciprocate by commenting on my blog. Obviously I know the people writing these blogs -- they're my friends! -- so I have a level of familiarity and insight into the author the colors the way I read their posts, which in turn affects the kind of comment I might leave. Interestingly, I comment more often on the blogs of those friends who I do not see in person regularly.

Beyond my friends, though, I don't think I've left a comment on a website in a long time. Which is odd, really, because I've been wondering why I get so few new comments here on my own blog!

Rarely a day goes by when I don't find some useful piece of information on someone's blog. Usually I'm trying to solve a problem, and find the solution posted to someone's blog by way of a Google search. But sometimes I'm sent a link to review, or just stumble upon something funny/insightful/thought provoking. I never comment on these posts, because I've always felt that a comment saying "Thanks, this was exactly what I needed!" wasn't a particularly useful comment to leave. Upon deeper reflection, though, I wonder how true that opinion is. As a content producer, I genuinely appreciate it when someone posts to my site saying "Thanks", so what prevents me from reciprocating?

I grew up online with Slashdot, which is nigh legendary for the comments it collects. There are deeply thoughtful, intelligent discussions in the Slashdot comments, but there's also an absurd number of offensive comments with no merit whatsoever. I'm seeing much the same now, writing for CrunchGear: the motivations for commenting are far more perplexing than I could ever have imagined. I like to joke that the CrunchGear readers are thoughtful, rational adults, but the CrunchGear commenters are a bunch of jerks. (This is, of course, a stereotype: there are a lot of insightful comments on CrunchGear, and I've enjoyed learning from our more mature commenters.)

For example, the comment thread on a simple product announcement post got totally derailed, almost completely drowning out the legitimate discussion that might otherwise have taken place. I've been insulted for my posts, and my favorite: accused of being on cocaine.

On a big site like CrunchGear, or Slashdot, the John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory comes into play. The relative size of the audience coupled with the safety of anonymity makes it easy to be childish, rude, and reactionary. There are various technical solutions that aim to curb the damage that can be done by malicious commenters, but it's really hard to solve social problems via technology.

So I'm curious: why do you comment? If you don't frequently comment, why not? If you're a content producer, do you want people to leave a simple "Thank you!", or would you prefer a more robust comment?

I've commented before that I don't use Facebook. Why should I? I have a blog. Anything I want to share with the world will be written here. I've had this blog for nearly ten years. I'm not hard to find, so anyone who might use Facebook to find me could just as easily search for me to find this blog.

And yet, there's something about Facebook that keeps drawing people in. Is it the ease of integration, such that you can go to a single site to see all the goings-on with your Facebook friends? Does Facebook make it demonstrably easier to participate in conversations, versus reading and writing blogs? Or is it just the economic factors: Facebook is free, and requires no investment of time to maintain or support? Or is it simply that Facebook has a critical mass already, and it's easier to use the tool all your friends are already using, rather than to get them to migrate over to your blog?

It's not just Facebook, either. I've seen a number of posts lately from long-time bloggers apologizing for abandoning their blogs in favor of Twitter, identi.ca, or other micro-blogging services. Micro-blogging services allow a much more rapid, conversational style of communication, and it's easy to see why people become so enamored with it. I use Twitter, and generally enjoy it, but I use it for things that are too fleeting, or too trivial, for a full blog post. I consider everything on Twitter to be ephemera, whereas I consider my blog posts to be long-lived pieces of my consciousness: something I may want to refer back to, or remember in the future.

As you may know, I'm involved with the blogging platform Habari. I like using Habari to write my blog posts. I like working on Habari, and investigating ways to make blogging easier for people. I'd like to continue to work on Habari, and make it the best blogging platform it can be.

To that end, I'd like to collect some feedback about why you blog. Have you stopped blogging in favor of Facebook or Twitter? If so, why? Is there something specifically lacking from a blog that drives you to use other social media solutions? If you still maintain a blog, what do you use it for? Do you use different tools for different messages, or just to reach different audiences?

We've had two parties now where substantial portions of the evening were spent watching YouTube videos on our Wii. Someone would say "Have you seen this one?" and then key up something like Flight of the Conchords. We'd all watch, and laugh heartily, until someone would suggest another video to watch, like the Star Trek version of the NIN Closer video or Chad Vader singing Chocolate Rain. I'm extremely tempted to purchase a USB keyboard for use with the Wii, because keying in search terms using the on-screen keyboard and the Wiimote is a real pain.

Adam Rosi-Kessel observes that kids today are growing up on YouTube. It's an observation that I've shared myself. The amount of YouTube watching that goes on in our house far exceeds television watching. The twins spend a lot of time taking turns on the laptop they share to watch things like talking cats, or fancy soccer tricks. They're far more interested in YouTube videos than they are in watching broadcast television or renting a DVD from Blockbuster.

The kids haven't expressed any interest in publishing anything to YouTube, which has me simultaneously relieved and disappointed. I'm glad that the kids aren't developing a legion of internet followers, but I'm also a little saddened that the kids are more interested in consuming than creating. I do hope that the creative spark will be ignited within them and that they'll take a stab at making something.

The kind of niche programming you can view on YouTube is far greater than even Netflix can provide, and it's all on-demand. Programming is almost entirely uninterrupted by advertising. You can watch what you want to watch, when you want to watch it. I wonder what the long-term effect of YouTube and its ilk will be on mainstream media and the big content producers.

We don't have cable at our house, and we don't watch broadcast television at all. The only reason we own a television is to watch DVDs -- either those we own, or those we get from the library and/or Netflix. As an early Christmas present, dad offered to purchase for us a new HDTV.

While at the store discussing options, the sales clerk asked if we had an HDTV cable box. I revealed that we didn't have cable. I'm not sure, but I think I heard the young fellow snort derisively to himself. I settled upon the on-sale model (a Panasonic 32") that dad had suggested, and soon I was home and hooking it up in our entertainment center. For a family that only watches DVDs, we sure have a lot of cables behind our entertainment center. We have a receiver, into which all of our various devices connect, a sub-woofer, our MVix MX-760HD (which is connected to one of our Linksys WRT54G wireless routers, which is also connected to the Linksys NSLU2 that holds all our digital media), our Nintendo Wii, our DVD + VCR combo, and a portable karaoke machine.

The new television is beautiful, and we've really enjoyed watching movies on it since I connected it. In fact, we spent most of the day yesterday on the couch watching the first season of Heroes. As folks who don't watch a lot of television programming, I find that we are simultaneously more discerning and more complacent viewers. We don't watch whatever happens to be on, and we don't coordinate our schedules in order to watch a specific show as it airs. Instead, we select what shows to watch based solely on our own interests (usually science fiction). Conversely, we're total suckers for the serial cliff-hanger nature of what we do watch, and we more than willingly suspend disbelief of glaring problems with the stories.

For the first dozen or so episodes of Heroes, for example, I was intrigued by the concept, and eager to see how things developed. By episode 15 or 16, I was quickly becoming suspicious, and finding it harder and harder to accept the powers of the Heroes. For example, I find it highly implausible that one's genetic code could allow them to defy the laws of gravity with human flight. Likewise, there's no way that one's genetic code could permit the direct manipulation of computers and other electronic devices (let alone time travel and teleportation!). And yet, still I'm hooked and eager to see how the season ends. I'm not sure if I'll have the patience for four more seasons of the show, as things get more and more ludicrous. I had the same problem with the show 24: it started out a fun, high-tension show that devolved into absurdity and soap opera faux drama. I'm seeing some of this with Heroes, already, as plot twists are introduced with increasing regularity.

I wonder, though, if part of my complaint stems from the frequency with which I watch episodes. Instead of waiting a whole week for the next installment, and having ample time to mull over on my own the story rather than its weaknesses, I simply press a button on the remote control. Certainly this convenience is a real benefit for watching a show after it has aired; but such a compressed viewing schedule might highlight the show's weaknesses without allowing me to properly digest the plot.

Another program that both Carina and I still enjoy is Battlestar Galactica. We're catching up on the third season, and enjoy watching one or two episodes after the kids have gone to sleep. Here again, I wonder if watching the installments in such quick succession is contributing to my waning interest in the story: the immediate gratification of finding out what happens next dulls the tension that the show's writers worked to establish in the pacing of the episodes.

I'm not particularly interested in other raved-about programs like Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and the like. I'm sure they're good shows, but for various reasons they don't catch my fancy. We'll probably finish watching Battlestar, and we've discussed catching up on Heroes enough to actually watch a broadcast version in order to see what that's like (since it's on NBC, not cable). After that, we'll most likely content ourselves with DVD movies, again.