It just means your posts can come up on the livejournal friends page of a person who's added your syndicated blog. Saving the time of visiting lots of different blogs and instead having all the recent posts of people you want to read on one handily digestable page.

So it's like having a public Bloglines subscription embedded in your site?

Fairy snuff, thanks.

Yup, very much so. I bring all the Internet I need right to my LJ; makes keeping up with things very convenient. Like your other commenters, I come here to comment rather than doing it on the feed. People do sometimes comment in feeds, but these often are notes to LJ-ers in general about the article. You get that more in the comic-strip feeds than anywhere else, as far as I can tell.

Bloggers who want or need the direct hits to their sites tend to configure their RSS feeds to just post a link to the updated content rather than including that content as well. I don't mind that a bit; the feed behaves as an update notification in that instance, and saves me going around to check the site.

What Superstring said. If I want to comment, I'll always come and do it here, but it's nicer to have all the blogs I read in one place, rather than going here, there and everywhere!

There is a seperate comments section, but it's rarely used for the obvious reason that you'll never see said comments. I read you via LJ syndication myself, but I click the link to the article if I want to comment.

What he said. It's no different really than reading your posts via an RSS reader; it's just more convenient for a lot of people to read all their RSS feeds on their LJ friends page rather than hop all over the place to different websites looking to see which ones have been updated.

Yup. What they said.

I click through to comment (once in a blue moon) but it means I can get my blogs in one convenient place.

We've started commenting in the syndicated feed just to be contrary now ~:0)

yay, what they all said!

(doesn't have the foggiest but feels like being a part of it)

Livejournal just allows people to access RSS feed as well as other Livejournal entries in one place. If you go to: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/random_reality/

You can click through each entry to view if you have any comments to each specific entry. There shouldn't be many (if any) comments to each post as most people are aware that the best way to get comments to you is by commenting on the blog itself.

First of all, syndication isn't just Live Journal. There are MILLIONS of free syndication feeds, and randomreality can be accessed via all of them.

Syndication doesn't hurt you as a writer at all - it just means I - and hundreds of other people - can read your posts easily. I keep abreast of about 55 blogs, and the plodding work of visiting 55 blogs every day, many of whom don't update daily, is unfortunately not feasible time wise. But with syndication, all the blogs and news feeds one cares about are instantly uploaded and don't require laborious chasing down.

The only down side to LJ RSS for you, as an author, would be if you lose advertising revenue, and there are even ways around that. For example, the famous blog "Overheard in NYC" incorporates advertising gifs into their actual RSS feeds.

So please don't worry about a special LJ " island." There's nothing unique about the LJ newsfeed software. You can't call it an island unless you are also calling all the other news feed software, like that released by the Guardian and countless other freeware sources, as "islands."

You don't even miss out on comments. If one wants to comment, the link is right there in the article, at the top of the entry.

Hi,

I use your livejournal syndication to follow your blog; it's sometimes an hour or two behind in picking up your latest post but I get to read them all in the end!

I have your syndicated account as a "friend" so I can read your words, those of my friends, and those of other syndicated things (examples are Dictionary.com word of the day, or BBC news headlines) at the same time once or twice a day. It just makes life easier.

Frankly, I'd forget to read your blog if it wasn't done like that (I forget many sites, or sometimes even email accounts I should be reading, if I get caught up in work).

You can view comments on your syndicated account, if you wish, by going to http://syndicated.livejournal.com/random_reality/ and clicking on each article, but in my experience most people know there is no point in commenting in a syndicated account, as it won't be read by the blog's author. Hence I've come here to leave this - and had to create an account to do so. Bother!

Cheers,
Flash

Whoo! Your blog is back up. Yesterday evening (BST) it was saying that you had exceeded your bandwith.