That makes sense, and that would work to me. It's definitely a nice compromise. I do agree that ultra short posts/tweets/pings would probably need to be a new post type. You'll probably still find you've got to cater for both sets of requirements, the ability to subscribe inline or the ability to subscribe to an aggregator. Having a separate 'post type' would make that more manageable.
The other problem I have with an aggregator is that it's normally going to be controlled by the poster or the system, rather than by the reader, and I can see different readers possibly wanting different degrees of fine control (possibly across different sources). This applies to both a ping aggregator and a more general post aggregator. I might want a daily aggregate, whereas someone else might want an aggregate every six hours / 15 pings whichever comes first.
With your inline method, an aggregate could possibly post multiple entries as a single block, with each individual entry having it's own Link | Reply.
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The other problem I have with an aggregator is that it's normally going to be controlled by the poster or the system, rather than by the reader, and I can see different readers possibly wanting different degrees of fine control (possibly across different sources). This applies to both a ping aggregator and a more general post aggregator. I might want a daily aggregate, whereas someone else might want an aggregate every six hours / 15 pings whichever comes first.
With your inline method, an aggregate could possibly post multiple entries as a single block, with each individual entry having it's own Link | Reply.