Huffington Post Update

When I last wrote about the Huffington Post, I expressed that it seemed like a very cool experiment. It has now been just over a week since the site launched, and I thought it would be good to take another look.

I’ve been subscribed ever since it started, and let me tell you, there’s never a shortage of content. There are always new items popping up in my aggregator, so I rather like that. There are a few things I don’t like about the feed however:

• On the newswire posts, you have to click through to the website to get the link to the story. Major pain! Link to the story from within the post please!
• The posts come down into my aggregator with the Author name, so including that name again before the content of the post seems redundant. Might be required for online aggregators though?
• I subscribe to the raw feed, so I get blog posts and news items. It would be nice if they appeared different somehow.

I suppose I haven’t really decided whether or not I like the content. I have found a few interesting posts, but I find you have to dig a bit. I’m not the only one with comments on the site though! Larry Borsato notes:

Let’s face it though, the Huffington Post isn’t much of a blog; they don’t have comments or trackbacks, so they aren’t really trying to engage in a conversation. They have a user agreement, and they are protectionist about copyright, though they do acknowledge fair use (since they expect to use the content of others). It’s more like a celebrities-only op-ed page, and the don’t accept letters from readers.

Good point. Blogging is all about the conversation, and it’s a shame that the Huffington Post is doing such a good job of stifling that. The problem is noted on the Neo Warmonger blog too.

Actually most of the comments I have seen so far have been negative. But I suppose we’re still talking about the site, and that’s all Arianna and her friends can ask for. How does the saying go? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Is there a similar saying for parody? Check out Huffington’s Toast. Ah that made me laugh 🙂

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