Why would I do that? A weblog is an "I talk, you listen" medium.
Seems appropriate if you're posting a focused piece of writing that required more organized thought than the average forum post. You provide the main thrust of the content; it will hopefully be the seed for the kind of conversation you're looking for, but you're still looking for a place specifically to expose people to whatever you're writing about. Blogs can generally be open to the world or only open to select people, depending on the host and the parameters they allow you to specify.
Otherwise, if the intent is to engage in discussion about your writing with like-minded people (meaning they share that hobby, not necessarily that they share your viewpoints) who also submit their own articles or stories, there are probably forums that exist specifically for that sort of thing. Which again takes something you hoped to make wide open and pushes it into a niche, but I don't see how you're going to find the kind of feedback you're looking for out in the big pond that is the Internet unless you have some way of directing the intended audience toward it.
Sure, others' comments appear in a small font at the bottom of the page, but I would much rather participate in a forum of equals.
Said forum will either require membership to post (the same thing you tried to prevent here, and that you are criticizing Facebook for), or else be open to the ravages of the Internet.
(I used to have a Xanga site which I rarely used, but then Xanga somehow broke the ability to sign in using Firefox on Linux (and perhaps other OSes as well,
some people seem to be having problems even on Windows) so I don't go there anymore. Xanga were sort of moving to the 'walled garden' approach since you had to be a member to comment, but at least they made their content public even if participation was private.)
Even when I had a Xanga site on which only other Xanga members could post (not specifically people I knew, though I could have restricted it to that if I chose), I would get the occasional drive-by spam or even a real person who I didn't know criticizing me for something like, oh I don't know, saying I found Asian women attractive. I figure you're either open to the world's crap and criticism and you accept that this kind of crap will come along with the possibility of finding kindred spirits among the total strangers, or else you implement that layer of safety by participating in a site that requires membership to post. You cannot have it both ways.
A weblog seems, in many ways, to be a step backward from a web forum. There are certainly instances where it is useful; if I had knowledge to share that I wanted to put on the web, for example, or if my main focus was generating original long-form content (such as Paul Graham's
essays or
Joel Spolsky's original posts on software development back in the early 2000s.
I must be misunderstanding the kind of "stories" you're hoping to use as a springboard for social interaction, then. A weblog setting may seem to have an "I speak, you listen and comment" format, but with multiple bloggers on the same site, there's a good amount of give and take, assuming they all post and read each other's posts regularly. (And this is what I think the better Facebook users are doing with its "Notes" widget - said notes along with photos and most anything else can be set to be world-viewable, though not world-commentable.)
Though I do create that sort of thing from time to time, I would much rather participate in a discussion. I prefer this thread over the Hangout thread, for example, because in this thread I'm interacting and have a chance to refine my opinions by hearing the opinions of someone who disagrees with me. In Hangout, it's usually just me posting things I find interesting, which nobody then proceeds to comment on.
We have a fairly small user base here at the Phorum. I honestly don't know how people find us at all. It's natural that a lot of things posted won't get commented on. I've learned not to assume that no comments means no one read it. A lot of times I read something and think "Hmmm, that was interesting", but I don't really have any specific feedback to provide, so I just finish reading it, close the window, and get back to whatever I was working on. I suspect a lot of people do this (which is probably why Facebook has that "Like" button, and other sites like Xanga have a way to give some sort of thumbs-up without actually commenting if you can't think of anything specific to say).
If I had a weblog, it would be all of that (no doubt including the lack of interest from others) and none of this. Or if I did get this, it would be my opinion front and center in the big type and then dissenting opinions sequestered at the bottom in small type.
I feel like you're looking for the ideal social networking solution that does not exist. It's paradoxical - it needs to be open to the world beyond a pre-selected list of your personal acquaintances, and yet it needs to be free of spam and derogatory comments from passing trolls. It needs to not trap its users in a "walled garden", yet it needs some sort of membership so that those who interact with one another can be identified in some sort of ongoing fashion. It needs to be enough of a presence on the web that it can be easily found, and yet not used by so much of the general populace that those who do not choose to use it feel excluded. If you can build that sort of a site and actually amass some sort of a decent user base, then by all means, sign me up.
