Some people want more For most people the Internet isthree things: A means of acquiring information, a means ofentertainment and a means of communicating with friends, family andcolleagues. The Web is fantastic at all three. But for some people, theWeb has a fourth dimension:
http://heritage-key.com/greece/agora-athens-marketplace-ideas .These are people who want to share their questions, insights and ideaswith the world,not just the miniscule fraction of people who happen to cross theirlives normally. They're people who want to change the world, and also to learnfrom the world in an active, questioning, interactive way, not a passiveway. What are the tools available to such people?
Commenting is ephemeral
The obvious choice is forums and comment threads. But these media are
http://yoomoot.com/articles/echo-wont-kill-comments-theyre-already-dead/ .On popular threads, new comments are immediately drowned out by all thenoise – brief flickers in an unnavigable stream. Moreover, there's noeffective way of coalescing all your comments into a coherent whole. Alist of all your comments would be a list of incoherent conversationsnippets rendered senseless by the absence of context. These problemsmake commenting a poor way of establishing an online presence andsharing your ideas with others.
Blogging is lonely
Consequently, many people reserve their most carefully-crafted thoughts for personalblogs. Blogs are organized. Blog posts are self-contained, easily editable, easilycategorized and are concentrated around your personal online identity. Theproblem is that the vast majority of bloggers are talking intoa void. It's very very hard for a new blogger to get to the pointwhere they receive regular comments. I know from experience that this can be demoralizing for would-be bloggers since feedback isgenerally the reward which keeps bloggers writing.
(and we're weaker alone)Thislack of feedback also wastes the potential of Internet. Insight, criticismand approval from others refines and sharpens our thinking. It alsomakes for better reading for everyone else. High-quality dialogues are muchmore enlightening than high-quality monologues.
The Web Citizen's DilemmaSopeople engaged with the Internet as the world's Agora are faced with adilemma: Should I submerge my work in the ephemeral liveliness offorums or showcase it in the lonely isolation of the typical blog?
yoomoot is social bloggingyoomoot resolves this dilemma by merging blog posts and comments into a single format: the moot. The
http://yoomoot.com/articles/order-without-authority-how-yoomoot-makes-long-and-complex-discussions-navigable/ structure by which moots are linked ensures that every moot can be simultaneously a conversationsnippet and a standalone article, meaning that your profile page, whichfeatures a list of all your conversation contributions, acts as both apersonal blog, and a gateway to wider discussions.