Perhaps my last post didn't get across what I really think about the social network sites. I want to keep control of what I write rather than relying on some corporation to keep all the old stuff and not surround it with ads that I have no interest in. That's why I maintain this blog as my primary means of expression.

Blogs used to be a bigger part of the web, but have been drowned out by the big networks. This has been a hot topic this week on Wired that drew responses on other sites.

It's actually never been easier to find and follow blogs with services like Google Reader. You can see immediately when a new post comes in. The danger is getting overwhelmed. I have to keep cutting back on feeds. There are still issues with comments. You don't see them in Reader unless you click through to the original article and even then most people will not plough through hundreds of comments. If there are more than a couple of screens' worth I expect most people will just move on after reading the article. Even if they want to comment they will fear being lost in the flood. Not a problem on this site.

Perhaps more people would run a blog if they knew that there are some fairly easy to use ways to do it, e.g. on Wordpress or Blogger. Those sites may offer some social features, but only within their own systems. What's needed are open standards for cross-blog communication. I think that some exist already. There are certainly ways to link to friends such as FOAF and XFN that I have tried to use. It seems that Google is now reading these.

The other thing that is missing from blogs is a standard way to restrict access to certain items. I don't want to put photos of my kids on my site for the world to see. That's why they go on Multiply. Perhaps something could be done using OpenID. I like the idea of linking that in with people I have in my FOAF file to automatically allocate access rights, but don't know how to implement it.

I need to do yet more reading to work out what is possible and backed up by standards to make my site more useful. Suggestions welcome.