why blogging and commenting and blog discussions sort of get ripped apart (my humble observations and thoughts…):
1) by services such as back type etc. (seems to me that it has become equally important to being able to “portfolio” one’s commenting activity on the web, not just one’s blogging activity — being a frequent commenter/discusser on A-Blogs seems to be a means to establish one’s standing on a specific web community),
2) people scout blogs for stuff they can bookmark; for info and data they can use – no one really says thanks anymore or adds their thoughts; I see from my stats that people definitely found answers to what they were looking for, but not ONE ever left a comment, and some even copied my posts verbatim; it’s pretty discouraging.
3) people use newsreaders to being able to read blog posts offline or on their mobile apps; this in turn nurses sort of a commenting lazyness.

4) lastly, your newsfeed can be hard to cope with, because besides your blogfeed and your delicious bookmarks you also feed your flickr stream into it, which can mean a lot of photos in one batch at times. When I check Google reader, I have to click over to chip to see whether there really is new content. Not to say that your photos weren’t interesting; they definitely aren’t, but it can mean quite some clicks before I come across new chiperoni content. I sometimes don’t click over, because I’m short in time….