Yesterday a fellow Resourcian pointed out an article written by Jakob Nielsen entitled “Write Articles, Not Blog Postings“.
I’ll readily admit I take anything Nielsen writes with a grain of salt. Coming from such a well-known name in the arena of web usability, I don’t find “alertbox” terribly easy to read. One of the biggest challenges I find with it is the number of characters to a line. There has been plenty of research done as to the optimal length of lines on the web, although now as I try to track those numbers down, I find that many of the resources date from the early 2000s, and it’s possible users perceptions have changed as their familiarity with the web has increased.
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Hmmm…
Actually, that article states that while users prefer a shorter line length esthetically, they actually read faster with a longer one. This is one of those classic usability conundrums I associate with Nielsen: do you appeal to what the user perceives he prefers, or simply provide what he wants? I think it depends on the level of engagement with the client. According to the “Ten Demandments“, there are ten stages in fostering a positive online experience: #1 is “earn my trust” and #3 is “make it easy”. A reader will come to the table with his own expectations, and you must first cultivate a trust relationship prior to forcing him to read long, ugly pages. 
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Still, I think that there are upper limits on what a user will read online. I’ve posted my papers from class to my blog, and I think looking at something too long will only deter potential readers.
Naturally, many people turn to the web for their primary information source, so it is important that information be informative and timely. Blogs simpify the publishing process to facilitate the dissemination of information. However, they also make it incredibly easy for people to share with the world the news of their puppy’s latest chewing adventure. When I first created a space online in the 90s, every attempt to publish was a development exercice. Every new “article” was a new page, and every other page had to be updated to link to it. You had to be willing to invest in what you wanted to say! Blogging was introduced to simplify and streamline that process, and I would argue serve a different market and model than a full-fledged website.
I don’t know if this is entirely fair, as the medium of presentation shouldn’t really influence the content completely. But I have a different expectation when I read something at *.blogspot.com than at a domain destination. Perhaps that harkens back to that level of trust the Ten Demandments refers to, and that engagement happens before I even hit the site itself, at the domain name level. Interesting….
I think your last paragraph hints at the real way of thinking about this: It’s not about the blog, it’s about the audience. A blog focusing on scientific research, for instance, will have an audience perfectly willing to slug through pages of research notes and citations. To contrast a community blog like wordpress or livejournal will cater to a much more casual group interested in text bites and rapidly consumed content.
As a result I also have different expectations between domain blogs and community blogs. The former has a domain, a “brand” as it were, and as a reader I am self selecting myself to be a part of that brand, and I expect it to adhere to that brand (which, if we’re being O.P.E.N., also requires my input and participation). The latter of the two doesn’t have a strong brand other than that of the umbrella company, and as a result I expect a much lower noise-to-signal ratio.