SEE ALL THAT YOU CAN SEE
Well, it didn't take long for the mainstream media (the Wall Street Journal) in this case to pick up on the "new, new media elite" of this Web 2.0 phase. Lee Gomes, a technology journalist I've long followed has an article titled "Tech Blog Produces New Elite to Help Track Industry Issues".
The article highlights new tech media hubs that have emerged to help the tech community keep tabs on all things new and interesting. Specifically, it mentions Memeorandum (which I quote often in my posts), along with TechCrunch and Blogniscient. As Lee explains it, these sites
"...have become the tech world's new elite. Reporters for the big mainstream newspapers and magazines, long accustomed to fawning treatment at corporate events, now show up and find that the best seats often go to the A-list bloggers. And living at the front of the velvet rope line means the big bloggers are frequently pitched and wooed. In fact, with the influence peddling universe in this state of flux, it's not uncommon for mainstream reporters, including the occasional technology columnist, to lobby bloggers to include links to their print articles.
The easiest way to follow this world is via a useful blog-tracking service called tech.memeorandum.com*.
The site runs off software written by Gabe Rivera, a former Intel compiler programmer. It sifts through hundreds of technology-oriented blogs to find the hour's hot topics and who is saying what about them. The results are presented concisely in a single place, updated every few minutes.
Another site, blogniscient.com, offers a similar service. (It is apparently important in the tech blog world to pick a name that is as awkwardly unspellable as possible.)"
He goes on to explain,
"Mr. Rivera estimates that roughly 12,000 people read his blog every day. In the great big real world of mainstream media, 12,000 is a rounding error. But in the new blog order in the tech world, that number is big enough to include the entire universe of decision makers, thought leaders, first movers and all relevant wannabes and hangers on.
The major difference between politics blogs and tech blogs is that many of the former still depend on the mainstream media to provide the grist for their mills. The tech blogs, though, have become a world onto themselves, and require no such crutch.
Consider a blog like TechCrunch, which chronicles the new breed of Internet start-ups known as Web 2.0 companies. The blogger behind it, Michael Arrington, is sufficiently influential that entrepreneurs in search of a write-up will make pilgrimages to his house to give product demos.
The fond hope of these entrepreneurs is that among his 12,000 readers will be a venture capitalist or (better yet) someone with a checkbook at Google or Yahoo. (Companies can be born, hire executives, unveil technology and get acquired without ever leaving this closed community.) And Mr. Arrington also has the social standing to be able to throw big Gatsby-like parties for as many of the 12,000 as were able to find out they were taking place and cared to show up.
This is frothy stuff..."
Frothy stuff? Well, maybe...to put a Web 1.0 face on it, these sites are becoming the "The Red Herrings" of the Web 2.0 era, just a lot less expensive to run as businesses (and hopefully far better businesses). Perhaps Tristan Louis should add this point to his excellent list of signs to watch out for another Bubble.
But potential froth and spellable names aside, I'm glad that these sites are getting their due in terms of mainstream media acknowledgment. These sites along with CrunchNotes (companion blog to TechCrunch), and Digg, have become part of my daily tech fix for quite some time now.
The one thing that the WSJ article does NOT do as good job in highlighting though is HOW relatively unique Memeorandum (and Digg) are in terms of how they've achieved their critical mass amongst the tech-hungry community. While TechCrunch is a good old fashioned "press the flesh" style technology blog, the other two are far more automated beasts, reflecting the aggregated, and CONSTANTLY churning attention of their tech readers and bloggers.
Memeorandum in particular, I must say has most changed the way I consume tech news on the web, and has affected the topics I blog about. As some readers have noticed, my blogging has become much more focused on tech related items (away from politics, global economy oriented matters) in recent months. My frequency of posts on some days has also gone up, since there are often days when I see news and/or posts on tech matters that inspire a quick response and/or observation.
It'd be interesting to hear if other tech bloggers are seeing their blogging habits affected by tech.memeorandum. For me so far, it's been a positive thing since it's brings a whole array of topical tech issues to think about everyday, both to consume and use as springboards for my own thoughts.
Maybe this is part of how the peer production model evolves in the broader media world. A balance of peer production AND consumption starts to emerge as other specific topics get "memeorandumed".
It's particularly important in how technologies like these are changing both the "discovery" and evolving "presentation" of relevant content from the earlier "type what you're searching for in a search box" and "scour this constantly growing list of things" for nuggets of things that may be of interest.
As Bubblegeneration's Umair highlights in an unrelated, but relevant post on Jeff Jarvis's "Dell Hell" phenomenon:
"Snowball Effect
"...Jarvis wrote about a bad experience he had with computer giant Dell's customer service, creating an avalanche of negative comments about Dell and bringing to light hundreds of bad consumer experiences with Dell's support staff."
Link - bolding's mine, to help explain the Snowball Effect. It's viral, yes - but it's not about "viral marketing". It's about very real value creation through viral dynamics - value that would otherwise never be created.
Read the quote again - it should be clear that this is the case. Jarvis's story caused new information (not just marketing blurbs) to be revealed and to snowball - information that effectively transferred value from Dell to consumers, and to it's competitors.
So the Snowball Effect is not not about Blair Witch (etc) style buzz - it's about value itself snowballing. In fact, Snowballs are a hyperefficient strategy for value creation in a world of connected consumers, but we won't get into the how and why here."
But the snowball effect also has a potential negative side effect to keep in mind. It's important though that we continue to keep a broader perspective...given that memeorandum's algorithms are partly seeded off the "A-list" tech (and political) blogs AND partly off of mainstream media (this story is a case in point), it's important to also focus on sites like Digg and Blogniscient that are more "democratic" aggregated representations of reader attention.
But in general, it's important to note that these types of sites and technologies, while giving us the bigger picture of the discussions around a microchunked piece of content, are also giving us glimpses on how more mainstream media may get consumed (and produced) going forward.
FOOTNOTE:
* I've corrected the faulty link to tech.memeorandum in the original WSJ story.
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