Jakob Nielsen put together a very interesting piece on weblog usability. While Nielsen is the master in terms of usability, I found myself disagreeing with a few of his points. It seemed that my issues all stemmed from the unique nature of blogs as content, in contradistinction to traditional web content sites. Here's my comments:

Nielsen says: "No Author Biographies" is bad. I say: some of the best blogs I read are anonymous, some of the worst blogs I've seen are anonymous. It depends, but if I connect with the message, I don't feel that I need to know about the author's cats. Same goes for author photos.

Nielsen says: "Nondescript Posting Titles" is bad. I disagree. Coming up with a snazzy headline is one of the most enjoyable parts of blogging. I usually try to make some sort of witty pop-culture reference whenever possible. I suppose this doesn't help my Google rankings, since a blog post gets auto-linked like crazy, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Nielsen says: "Irregular Publishing Frequency" is bad. I disagree. This is what we have RSS for. If I really care what you have to say, I subscribe to your feed. It's a stronger bond between publisher and reader.

Nielsen says: "Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service" is bad. I suppose if you are a multinational corporation, it would look bad to have http://mcdonalds.blogspot.com, but for anyone else, I think it's OK. Whatsmore, I think Nielsen underestimates the power of community. I've noticed that bloggers that focus on specific topics tend to migrate to the same services. For example, there's an large number of knitting blogs on Typepad; for some reason, Jewish bloggers tend to not only use Blogspot, but they all use the same template! Belonging to a community plays a very powerful role in how a blog identifies with its niche, and that includes the host you use and the way your site looks. Besides, I don't think we need to worry about Blogger going anywhere (I used it recently, and was blown away at all the subtle features they have added).

That being said, some of Neilsen's points are spot on. I think blogs should, in general, maintain a specific focus. Navigation can be improved. And anyone who makes a link that says, "Check it out here" should have their keyboard confiscated.