Comment is free is live

Comment is free has launched. It looks handsome, but. At its heart, it's an aggregation of Guardian columnists, and of course if you're a newspaper columnist you don't write with hyperlinks. So there's precious little of the link-juice that really drives the blogosphere: no indication that every link out is rewarded with a new link in. The likes of Jeff Jarvis (who consults for the Guardian) love to say that blogs are a conversation; well, these ones aren't, or aren't yet, at any rate.

The site also suffers from its corporate ownership:

We don't include full text at the moment because we'd prefer you visit the site and participate. It's also very hard to tell who's reading what if you offer full text RSS, and on a free site that information is quite important.

In other words, given the choice between serving readers and serving advertisers, the Guardian chose the latter. Which is understandable, given that the Guardian is an advertising-funded company. But RSS with advertising is much better than broken RSS.

Still, one wish has been granted: Marina Hyde now has a homepage and an RSS feed!

Posted by Felix at 11:25 EST