PhotoBlogs and feedreaders

nilhg

Given the recent boom here in new photoblogs, (including me) something kjt said on his blog today crystallised what I'd been thinking about over the last while. Folks put a lot of effort into getting the look and feel of their photoblog exactly the way they want it and then I read through google reader and a lot of their hard work is for naught.

I have a boards photography widget on my igoogle page so I get updates of all new posts from folk here as they arrive, but of course see the content stripped of all the formatting and themes people have worked to put in place, with just a plain white background. In one way I suppose its a very democratic way to see it as the quality of the content should be the most important thing and the option is always there to click through.

I'm just wondering what way (or if) folk here view photoblogs and if you have one, is the fact that somebody who subscribes to your feed usually will see the content more important than actual visits to the site itself.

latchiko

Some photoblogs have addressed this by including a very small version of the image posted, or sometimes no image at all, in the RSS feed. Personally, I think this is a little annoying as it is forcing the visitor to click through.

Offering visitors a little more on your site than what they get in the reader can help guide them to your site. I find that quite a few people click though to my blog and I assume it's because it's the only way that they can see the original image before processing.

As for viewing photoblogs, I use google reader to keep up with postings, but I'll often click through to post/read comments and so on.

bovril

Interesting posts, until a few days ago I knew nothing about RSS and readers etc. It was only when the RSS was broken on my blog that I figured a few things out. A friend of mine showed me how it works in his gmail and asked me to change from displaying a thumbnail to displaying the full image as this is how he likes to view them. It was after this I thought what is the point of the comment facility etc if the user has to click on the link and they see the photo anyway in their reader.

I want as many people to see my photos but I'd like them to see them within the designs of my blog. I think that might be looking for too much and maybe latchiko has hit the nail on the head by providing a kind of bread crumb trail to the actual blog post.

Covey

Oh Gawd, I just like taking photos, why do I have to learn all this stuff :eek:

kjt

I've been using feedreader for the past week and finding it very nice.

This is how one of my latest posts looks:




A lot of it comes down to how well you've coded your posts too. Personally I like to go to people websites, as this is how they were meant to be seen. I'll usually view the post in feedreader and then head over to the persons site if they have a few new posts, if I'm going to comment or if theirs a lot to read/look at

I try to get a good mixture of 'nice big juicey shots' and text in there. Theirs always going to be people who just view images and there will always be the folks who love to read. My idea is to have good images to encourage and convert the picture people into reading a bit of the blog too


I have a purely picture blog idea on the cards but I don't know when I'll have the time to design and code that badboy.