But nobody uses frontpages for content discovery. The front page of a blog is good for just two questions:
a) For new users: is this site any good?
b) For existing users (who don't grok RSS, sigh): is there anything new?
You can try to do more. Lots of us have category pages[1]. But invariably they get browsed by initial visitors so they fall into category a above.
Perhaps what you're saying is that every website needs a channel to bring visitors back. And twitter may well be that channel. But bricestacey is right that the frontpage is all about user onboarding simply because nobody uses it for content discovery.
Nobody uses front pages for content discovery because the front pages rarely present the right interface or content for that. Maybe that can change...
I think that merely serving current/new users in this way is selling your content short. It's the written equivalent of a news channel, instead of being the evolution of the book. I'm hoping we can do better.
"I think that merely serving current/new users in this way is selling your content short."
I'm not convinced that's true. The big limitation of the frontpage is that there's no way to remind people to return to it. Without that you'll only get current/new users.
I totally agree we need a solution for content discovery. Like many others I took my stab at building one (http://readwarp.com) I'm just not convinced that the frontpage is the place for it.
a) For new users: is this site any good?
b) For existing users (who don't grok RSS, sigh): is there anything new?
You can try to do more. Lots of us have category pages[1]. But invariably they get browsed by initial visitors so they fall into category a above.
Perhaps what you're saying is that every website needs a channel to bring visitors back. And twitter may well be that channel. But bricestacey is right that the frontpage is all about user onboarding simply because nobody uses it for content discovery.
[1] Including myself: http://akkartik.name