Feed the blog, or feed the blogger?

I’ve been thinking about blogs, blogrolls and RSS (or Atom) feeds. Recently, I changed over Nfaf’s blogroll because it had gotten crufty and because Bill and Son1 challenged me to. Well, not directly. But you know, I took it that way.

Anyway, I realized that I seldom read blogs in their native form. A few I do: the ones that don’t send the pictures along with their feeds, or the ones who refuse to send the whole text of the post (or refuse to do it even on the main page — Language Log, I’m lookin’ at you!). The rest, though, I usually see only in Safari (or Firefox/Sage, depending on my mood).

And so I don’t usually see bloggers’ sidebars — not their “About me!” statements, not their blogrolls, not their Flickr photo-streams, not their Google AdSense ads, not their Amazon Wishlists, and not their PayPal Donate! buttons. I also don’t have to wait for JavaScript, music or graphics to finish downloading.

And I am sooo glad for that.

But if we’re all just reading through syndication, what’s the point of the shilling and excessive bandwidth usage? Why are blogs becoming ever more graphics-intensive — have you looked at some of the WordPress themes? — when people are more likely to only see your text without all of the styles you so carefully designed?

I really do believe that “we’re all reading RSS” — hell, the BBC has feeds for everything for its news site (and gives you permission to rebroadcast it). I am well-known as an early enthusiast but late adopter of technologies — I’m the one who says, “This sounds cool! You try it!” — so if I’m using RSS, then lots of people are.

Is syndication going to be the technology that makes the internet seem less, well, commercial? I doubt it. I’ve already read the term Tagspam to describe the misuse of Technorati tags to promote items unrelated to the subject. No doubt someone will figure a way to get the non-post material into the post so us “eyeballs” can see ’em.

Makes me feel kind of sorry for the folks who don’t use a browser with ad-blocking.

Update: I've just run across an alpha version of a WordPress plugin to automatically include AdSense to your feed. Created by the lead developer of WordPress. Sheesh.