A mix of larger-than-life leaders,egoists, charmers with big visions. A healthy dream that may or may not come alive but it is a good to see progress here even though the rest of the world maybe on version 10.

To The NaijaLive folks, If “Better to be inviting, rather than invisible” is your aim pls add us. Love all, serve all.

And if you ever do find your content somewhere you don’t want it…ask it be removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication

More info of how to protect your RSS feeds if you do need to notify your visitors about your copyright level can be found here: http://www.feedforall.com/rss-copyright-debate.htm

The second issue is that the NSB is posting full text feeds. Many bloggers choose to release only a excerpt of their post via RSS – the idea is that interested readers will come to the site and read the whole post. This is pretty important if you’re looking for ad support for your site, or if you want people to leave comments on your site. Since NSB is printing full text feeds and accepting comments on posts, it makes it unlikely that anyone coming in via NSB is going to end up on the original blog… and I can understand why that would make some bloggers very upset.

BlogAfrica is a pretty primitive project, and it’s not likely to get much better – I don’t have the time to make improvements to it, and I’m much more interested in what we can do with sites like Global Voices, which are a very different form of aggregator, an edited aggregator that uses translation, contextualization and editorial choice to give a particular picture of blogospheres. I’m really glad that lots of people are trying to build aggregators for parts of the African blogosphere, or for the entirety. But I think we’re likely to see a set of norms that emerge pretty quickly as people figure out how to build aggregators that make the blogs included happy, not anger some of them.

If your aggregator makes money (ads, sponsors, etc) from that content, then it will not be suprising to see bloggers who object having their content used to generate income for other people and at the same time keeping community away from their blogs.

These issues are extremely important. And this debate is healthy. The future of citizen media in Africa depends, among other things, on discussions, which clarify (or even problematize) the complex legal, social, theoretical, and architectural terrain of new media. We are on the right track.

Good content is the key to traffic and profit on the Internet, and good content is expensive to create. So they figure it will be easier to just ‘aggregate’ it.

Kazey of NigerianBloggers may be an exception, though.

My name is Tony Areghan, a 26 year old Petroleum Engineer and I am head of The NaijaLive Project team. Due to time constraints, I’m forced to make this a “short” comment but I intend to write a full blown essay on the matter some time in the future.

It is quite surprising that people find it difficult to accomodate change.

All the so called aggregators out there are doing the same basic thing: publishing headlines and excerpts (due to obvious copyright restrictions). The only difference is in their interfaces.

But we realized long ago from an offline survey we carried out that most people who read blogs seemed to prefer reading the posts they like without blog hopping and having to click so many times. So we set out to experiment with a different format. This is where the Super Blog idea came from.

What we are trying to do is to meet everyones needs halfway. According to our blueprint, we start with a very very basic concept and design which will gradually be modified over time based on user feedback. We have already made the first interface change and are currently working on a major upgrade that would incorporate several new features (and kill some of the old ones).

The web is changing and standards are changing with it. The old garb of “professionalism” is fast being shed, paving way for the rise of the “unprofessionals”. With the increasing popularity of the Web 2.0 ideology, more and more ordinary people are coming up with simple and “unprofessional” ideas that have grown into powerful web communities.

So far we have restrained ourselves from reacting in the same language and tone with which the people mentioned in your post have criticised us, and to show how sorry we are, we even published the apology to Mr. Ajao openly for all the world to see.

In the simplest terms, while WE CARE very very much about overstepping bounds per legality and licensing, we don’t exactly “give a hoot” about so-called “professionalism”.

A person’s blog is their own unbridled voice. Why must he/she be constrained by professionalism or anything else for that matter???

BTW We have removed both blogs mentioned above per their requests. And for the record, there has been NO OTHER “remove my blog” requests. Rather, we are getting more and more “add my blog” requests and over the last week, the blog count grew from 221 to 258. Plus we are also seeing our traffic increase quite rapidly so we are quite happy with what we are doing.

Last word to the world:
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The Nigerian Super Blog is a free service.
1. If you like it, use it
2. If you do not like it, don’t use it
3. If you don’t like the way we are using your blog, tell us and we’ll change.
4. If you like the way we are using your blog, link to us and we’ll thank you.
5. If you have ideas for us, tell us
6. If you do not have ideas for us, leave us alone.
7. We love you all :D

Thanks for the summary of the debate!