Having talked about community being an important aspect of the blogosphere, here’s an example which happened today.

I had written a piece on Geekrant about early adopters of Mac OS X Tiger. A couple of people responded to it in the comments section, and so I visited their websites - I often do that out of interest, to see what sort of things people who comment blog about themselves.

The headline article on the blog when I visited it was about cleaning and repairing a PC. It was well written and interesting, and I wanted to say so. I could have just written ‘Nice post’ or some other two word entry, but that’s wavering on the thin line between a genuine contribution and spam (albeit human-generated) in order to get a link.

What I wrote wasn’t exactly an essay, but it did express my genuine appreciation for the article (I don’t often feel compelled to leave a comment purely about the quality of the post; I usually just comment on the idea itself).

Later this afternoon I received a personal email from the blog author, saying thanks for the post. I must be honest, when it arrived in my email tray, I thought it might’ve been just an anti-spam auto-response. Actually it was a very pleasant message which naturally referenced the PC article, the Mac article, some personal information about me (I presume gleaned from one of my other posts) and a comment that he’d be checking out future posts from both Geekrant and this blog.

In other words, it was genuinely human.

I don’t want to get too prescriptive about this, because it was a good experience in itself. Nevertheless, what have been the positive repercussions of this?

• The standard link that is usually left with comments does get clicked on, and thus visited
• Leaving a genuine email address (though not your main personal or work one) allows blog owners to email you personally.
• A personal email to a commenter stands out from simply replying on your blog. It shows you value the commenter and that you found time to respond. Then again, it should be used sparingly, otherwise it becomes automatic and is devalued.
• There can be a healthy relationship between collaborative blogs and the personal blogs of its contributors.
• My estimation of the blogger who emailed me has increased; I have added the site to my Bloglines feeds, and am more likely to be a regular reader. It also makes me want to link to the site.
• Communication has extended beyond the blog itself (though it often quickly returns to the ’sphere) and is personalised.
• You get a warm glow, knowing you have spent a little time with a fellow blogger.