There's now an associated RSS feed with weblogs.com. With this, aggregators could check the feed to know when to poll an individual weblog RSS feed. On the face, this sounds good: stop all that polling and all those hits to our RSS fies. However, the problem with this approach is that it's centralizing what is now a decentralized service.

Centralization means becoming dependent on one service for new information. If the service goes down, you would then need to make sure your aggregator reverts back to the old polling procedure.

There's a second problem to centralization -- control. If one organization controls the RSS feed, there's nothing to stop that organization filtering weblogs -- and the RSS feeds associated with the weblogs. The issue of weblogs.com being filtered has been discussed here before.

Finally, a third problem: As it is, I have to wait too long for the trackback and whatever pings to occur when I do an update to my weblog. Yet another 'ping' is just an annoyance. I'd rather just have well behaved aggregators that only check every hour.

Better, yet: I'd rather have you all click the blogroll entry with my name on it -- it's B-u-r-n-i-n-g-b-i-r-d in case you've forgotten -- and wait with a smile of anticipation on your face as my page loads, rubbing your hands together in excitement. Kind of like a kid opening a present during the holidays. Think of this weblog wrapped in a bow if it helps.

And this approach can't be spammed, hacked, or broken.