Today’s post by Paul Thurrott is why I read feeds. It’s not important to a mass audience. It won’t get on TechMeme or Digg or TailRank or Google News. But I have met Paul and didn’t realize his son is deaf and getting cochlear implants. His story is moving and shares with us that the technology is progressing to the point where his son will have a mostly-normal life. It’s inspiring, thanks to Paul for sharing it. And next time I’m at some boring conference and looking for something to say to Paul I’ll be sure to ask him how his son is doing. God forbid, if my own son has the same set of problems I know the first person I’ll call.

OK, yesterday when i wrote I’d add all of you as my Facebook friends I had about 600 friends. Today I have more than 1,300. Tons of you wrote you love my blog. But most of you don’t comment. In fact, out of the 700 people who added me as a Facebook friend I can only see about 20 that have left a comment — ever.

What is fascinating to me is now I have a new way to understand my audience. Where you live. Where you go to school. What your hobbies are. What you look like (most have posted their pictures).

Plus, I have another source of interesting blogs and interesting information coming to me. Thanks for participating! I’m still adding new friends, by the way.

It’s easier than getting into a TechCrunch party (Mike Arrington just put another 100 tickets out on TechCrunch and sold out in eight minutes. Amazing! He announced the sale on Twitter).

I asked people on Twitter about why most people don’t comment and got back a variety of responses from “requires me to think” to “shy.” Anyway, why don’t YOU comment on my blog? It’s quite obvious that there’s a much larger group of you that don’t comment than do.

This is going to come across like I’m an arrogant bbbbaahhhhhsssssttttttaaaarrrrrdddddd. But, it needs to be pointed out.

TechMeme (which started out as a blog news engine) has totally switched its focus away from blogs. I’m tracking the Plaxo news. I was among the first two sites out with news about Plaxo’s new 3.0 platform. I have the only videos. Posted two of them. I have one of the first real reviews. Google’s blog search shows I have the most inbound links. Om Malik, who posted a story about Plaxo two hours after I did, even linked to me.

Yet the top article right now? One by the Register which doesn’t even have comments and doesn’t link out and doesn’t have screen captures (like other articles do) and doesn’t have video and doesn’t even have any real news.

The Register has zero inbound links, Om’s article has six, and mine has 12.

Gabe has turned TechMeme into a Google News instead of something that looks at blogs.

Both Google’s blog search and technorati show zero inbound links for the Register’s article. Why is it #1? Because TechMeme just turned “pro.”

And competitor TailRank is no better. It doesn’t have ANY article on Plaxo on its home page and when I clicked on the second page of Tech TailRank gave me an error.

Sigh.

What’s worse is Google’s Reader is having problems this morning so I can’t even get the news I want there. Sigh.