The other thing that many people who don't have a great deal of support forget is that most of their interaction should be off their own blog roll.
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This really cannot be repeated enough. To grow your audience you have to go and find it, and it's never been more the case than today, unfortunately.
Yeah, it will improve and eventually, some killer interface will take most of the users but for now, this is what there is and working with it will bring benefits.