Conglomerate merger

Vic Fleischer has joined Christine and Gordon on Conglomerate.  Gordon explains:

We found our blogs interlinking a lot, and despite my recent expression of skepticism on the subject, the word "synergy" seems appropriate.

Actually, true to the name of the blog, it’s an elusive sort of synergy.  Given RSS feeds and aggregators like Bloglines, readers easily can roll their own combinations.

Of course, the effect is, possibly, to get more hits for all of the co-bloggers (and more ad revenue should they want it). But it would seem that the extra hits come because of readers’ costs of disaggregating, and therefore do not add much consumer value.
So is Conglomerate doing what the trustbusters would call a tying arrangement?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  This is not a problem for me because I would willingly read all three even if they were separate. That’s true also of the Volokh conspirators. But I wonder if this trend will lead to misbegotten combos that will reduce reader value.

As I indicated above, maybe what we need is a disaggregation technology.  That would be helpful for the mainstream media as well as for blogs.  For example, it would be great if I could just get the NYT obituaries (my favorite section) and not have to accept a bigger package that includes, say, Paul Krugman. 
(So maybe the trustbusters should call on the NYT too.)

Anyway, good luck to the expanding Conglomerate crew.  May they be fruitful, but hopefully not multiply too much.

Update:  In response to Vic:

No, I don't think the feds should investigate Conglomerate for an antitrust violation.  I'm assuming, of course, that they filed an HSR notice.

Vic says that RSS feeds make blog mergers more sensible.  Why? The feeds reduce the cost of skimming blogs, and so they reduce the extra costs imposed by the merger.  But the merger still imposes extra costs. 

Is the argument that once you reduce these extra costs, the benefits of the merger outweigh the costs?  If so, what are the benefits to the reader, given RSS feeds?  Since I am one of those who likes all of the Conglomerates, it seems that I would be one of the readers who is benefiting.  But it takes me hardly less time to skim Bloglines than to skim the merged Conglomerate.  And if I were one of the readers who didn't like, say, Vic, I would be spending a little extra time (ok, maybe not much) scanning Conglomerate.

The best argument for Vic’s position would seem to be that I'm exposed to his posts, when I wouldn't be otherwise.  But as Gordon pointed out, he's already linking Vic liberally. If I'm a regular reader of Conglomerate and I still haven't been convinced of Vic's value, why is adding Vic going to change that? And if I'm not a regular reader of either Vic or Conglomerate, why would I become one after the merger?

In short, I still don't get it.  As Vic points out, RSS feeds change the way we respond to blogs.  But they do so by facilitating disaggregation, not by increasing the benefits of aggregation.

I should add that similar considerations relate to the sole blogger.  Somebody who is not interested in cheese or bicycles derives less net value from Conglomerate than if the blog excluded those subjects.  RSS feeds reduce but don't eliminate the extra costs, and certainly don't make the extra posts more valuable.  (I could apply this to my blog, but I can't think of anything there that somebody wouldn't be interested in.)

And let me emphasize:  this is all theoretical.  I really do like all of the Conglomerates, and I don't mind at all having them together.  In fact, it might save me whole milliseconds a day. I'm just wondering whether this trend might lead us somewhere we don't want to go.

Update 2:  Vic has refined his argument, and it turns out to be that spinach is good for you, which is not really what I thought. All I can do is add a cite for his argument:  Sunstein's Republic.com.