Re: the value-added features, I stand by the points in my suggestions that don’t appear to be implemented– particularly the first two!– but you provide more value to the aggregation than I represented.

It seems to me that if you aren’t going to ask permission– and I recognize that there is no legal reason you *have* to– that you should make opting out easy.

Re: the publication of full feed content… I will make a correction to the post. I may have misinterpreted some behind-the-scenes conversation.

Compare BNN to three different blog aggregation sites and I think we come off pretty well.

Alltop: What do they do to add value other than the mere aggregation (which by the way uses longer excerpts than BNN does.)

Technorati: go to Technorati’s auto site (http://www.technorati.com/lifestyle/autos/) and try to click thru to an auto blog … you have to go thru more technorati pages … go to BNN’s auto site (http://www.blognetnews.com/autos) and you can click straight thru to the blog in question

Blogowogo: go to any section and you’ll see that they try to get people to comment on their site instead of on the blog site that write the post in the first place

Daily top news based on what local and national news stories bloggers in each state or city are linking to: http://www.blognetnews.com/virginia/news.php

State, topic or city-specific blog search: http://www.blognetnews.com/virginia/searchtool.php
(also on the top right of every BNN page)

State, topic or city-specific headline widgets: http://www.blognetnews.com/virginia/add-bnn.php

Customizable feeds by email, mobile device, rss, or widget: http://www.blognetnews.com/feedcentral — sortable by category, by key words, by most commented, most linked, most clicked and more

Constantly updated rankings of which posts are:
most clicked: http://www.blognetnews.com/virginia/most-clicked_archive.php
and there are also rankings for most commented, most linked, most active, highest rated by users etc.

We also produce a BNN influence index every week for most state’s political blogospheres that uses a bunch of combined stats to determine which blogs are driving the conversation.

Anyway, all of those features are reachable from the left sidebar of the site.

Most importantly, I think you should change the text of this post to reflect the simple fact that BNN has ALWAYS published 50 word excerpts. At no time have we EVER published full feeds. If you would like to verify this fact for yourself, I would be happy to provide you emails from 20 different bloggers we began aggregating at our first site in July 2006. (Virginia political blogs).

This allegation is rather infuriating because I have been a published writer for more than a decade and I built the system to respect copyright and stay well within fair use boundaries — in short to make sure that readers who were interested in a blog post would have to go to the blog in question to read it, just as I would like readers to come to my site to read what I have written.

Second, you sensibly argue that if BNN wants to be profitable and a respected part of the community, it should roll out value added services that do more than just aggregate posts. That is exactly what we have done from day one.

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