In today’s times, people say that comments can be blog posts. Others disagree with this idea. The idea that comments are blog posts comes from that many comments are as high quality as blog posts. The post “Comments Can Be Blog Posts” mentions that there are people that do not blog for whatever reason, but they leave intelligent comments.

Many blog posts would do very well as comments on another blog. But popular bloggers prefer to blog, rather than comment. Why? Well, there are several reasons. You can’t make (ad) money off comments. Many people do not read comments due to comment spam, lack of time, etc. There are plenty of reasons why there aren’t popular commentors that are not bloggers.

So, can a comment be a blog post? Considering that I could have posted the blog post you’re reading right now as a comment, I would say yes. But Alexander van Elsas says that commenting is easier than blogging, which I would have to agree with. A comment is a response. The blogger stimulated the thought, and the commentor responds.

Does that mean that bloggers are the ones that start the discussion, and that makes blogging separate from commenting? I disagree. While there are plenty of blog posts that start discussions, there are plenty of blog posts that respond to discussions. Like this post. All I’m doing is responding to a bunch of people’s blog posts on my own blog, and as I mentioned earlier, this blog post would work very well as a comment.

So far, I have said that comments can be blog posts, there are advantages in blogging that you don’t see in commenting, commenting is easier, and that blog posts are like comments.

But blog posts and comments are just mediums for discussion. FriendFeed got it right. You’re not subscribing to a blog, you’re subscribing to a person. On FriendFeed, you see whatever services people are using. You also see comments. Blog posts and comments aren’t really different. They’re just the sharing of thoughts, just like posting something on Twitter or Youtube.

Steve Hodson posted on WinExtra that services like FriendFeed are making it more attractive to move away from the blog format. Whether or not this will happen is a debate, but I think that the FriendFeed idea that you subscribe to people, not blogs will definitely change the face of the blogosphere.