Blogging : Live direct communication with your readers – Google Talk and Woopra

Live communication with your blog readers is something I've noticed is beginning to gain popularity across the web. Quite a few of the blogs I visit to leave comments after browsing their RSS are now using this relatively new Google Talk widget which allows your readers to try and communicate with you (add it to your blog here).

The more alarming one is that new service of Woopra that allows the site admin to get the most incredible collection of stats, actually see what's happening on the blog live and even start a conversation.

The feature itself isn't new, but how it comes up on the user side is a bit, eh, different from what I've seen so far. Here's an example from one of the sites.

The Webmaster says "hi". That's just great. The first time a blogger attempted to talk to me this way I was a bit confused. This is a neat little feature if you're the blogger, but I'm not so sure about the reader side.

In any case, this is an interesting direction for interactivity and communications between bloggers/web-admins and their users. It will take me a while to get used to it, on both sides, but aside from the obvious implications I can already see some great benefits.