When a person visits your blog, they can be overwhelmed by the amount of content that is on display. It becomes even worse when you consider the fact that some blogs manage to push out several 500+ word posts on a daily basis. For all that content to end up on your homepage, it can just be far too much. The use of excerpts can be a simple and effective way to control information overload.

Truth be told, a simple reverse chronological order of the entire contents of a blog are just unappealing to me—who reads past the first page? I don't have time for that. It is just more unnecessary effort required by the users.

This is why I believe that many of today's blogs are going to—slowly but eventually—transition to magazine-/newspaper-like designs in the future. And why not? They look just as good and allow more links to content on your blog. It gives the blog an opportunity to display their best content while organizing it for the reader. The problem with the typical blog these days is that it is just content from all types of categories mashed into one linear listing, and if your blog covers a wide variety of subjects, you could imagine how much more complicated things can get for the reader.

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