Olaf Brugman writes in Debunking Waypath about his far-from-perfect experiences of finding relevant weblogs via subscription to RSS feed of Waypath search results. My experiences with RSS subscription are similar (noise/signal ratio is comparable with general search), but I’d like to point out that my enthusiasm about Waypath comes from using Waypath plug-in, which somehow works better.
Waypath plug-in finds and shows weblog posts connected to your post. For me the main value of it is in finding posts related to my writing outside of my “regularly read” circle of weblogs.
This plug-in is not perfect as:
- results are better for longer posts, so there is almost nothing to expect for short posts
- sometimes it links to weblogs I read, so there is noting new (but it’s still interesting)
- it’s a rare case if all of three links shown are relevant
Still, there are cases when I’m really happy with it. Two recent examples:
For my Technorati+TrackBack for tracking who links to a post Waypath plug-in links to Burningbird: Trackback for the Non-Trackback Enabled and magpiebrain: Trackbacks considered harmful?
For my Is it difficult to ‘catch up’ with a weblog? it links to Read/Write Web: Tracking conversations with Wikis and Common Craft – Online Communication Planning: Advice on Professional Weblogs
2 out of 3 relevant (for me) posts from weblogs I don’t read regularly.
Tags: blog ecosystem, blog toolsArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/04.html#a778; comments are here.
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