The who list?
Out in the blogosphere there’s this tiny little group of folks who care about how the Internet is changing and wish to better understand how we got to this point, and where we are going from here. They pay attention just because they’re interested, because they want to influence how things develop, or they want to make a buck (I would ascribe all three of those motivations to myself). In this small, yet fairly influential, corner of the blogging world there are a few folks who have the loudest and most authoritative voices. They are known as the A-list. They are famous among many of the few who actually care about this stuff. Most people in the world have never heard of the A-listers. In fact, you could probably say that most people in the U.S. or even most people who are employed in the technology industry have not heard of them. The A-listers do wield some influence though, since members of the mainstream media, covering the evolution of social media and the Internet, are tuned into what the high priests are prognosticating.
As someone who does care passionately about where social media and the Internet are heading, I do check in with these rockstar blogs occasionally and have even met several of them in person. When I read their stuff though, I invariably find myself asking “why do people read this guy?” Yet I still feel a nagging need to check in occasionally. So over the past few years of observation and talking with others I’ve started to gain a better understanding of why people place value on what this select group of folks has to say. My conclusion is that most of the benefit of keeping up with A-listers comes from the “search value”—the sifting, sorting and filtering that A-listers perform when they present their picks for most important concepts or news items of the day.
To dig deeper into this analysis, I wanted to quantify things a bit. So I decided to take a look at a full week’s worth of entries for a few of my favorite A-list peeps. For my experiment I chose three blogging rockstars:
Note: bars indicate number of posts for the category.
The A-listers are viewed by many as pundits or pontificators – but from my perspective these guys are not actually putting forth a whole lot in the way of declarative statements or analysis (at least not through their blogs). In fact I’d say they’re acting more like radio DJ’s (playing attractive mixes of someone else’s original content), rather than artists. (Note: I'm going to chime in on podcasting in a later post)
Although most of them are very intelligent, they’re really not using a blog as a platform for conveying intelligent thoughts – they are primarily routing people to other content, sometimes providing summary information.
Now keep in mind, this is just one flavor of A-list blogger. There are certainly other bloggers, especially outside of the technology industry echo chamber, who are writing from a more journalistic or analytical perspective (e.g. Daily Kos, Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, et al); but for the most part, the A-listers in my industry are simple, useful link brokers. My sense is that the list of most widely read blogs will change dramatically over the next 5 or so years. Even though Technorati is tracking 783 million blogs, and MSN Spaces has 96 gajillion active bloggers, we are still in the early adopter phase of blogging’s life. It makes sense that blog industry types are the most widely read in this early stage. However, as blogs become more mainstream, the A-list will be dominated by traditional journalists, politicians and celebrities. Millions of people will eventually subscribe to Chris Rock’s RSS feed, far less to Rubel’s. (Sorry Steve, Micro Persuasion's relative traffic will ultimately be micro-sized ;))
As the medium becomes more widely accepted, appropriately packaged for a consumer audience, and fully tracked and analyzed, it will be interesting to see who are the most popular personalities perched atop the long tail.
As someone who does care passionately about where social media and the Internet are heading, I do check in with these rockstar blogs occasionally and have even met several of them in person. When I read their stuff though, I invariably find myself asking “why do people read this guy?” Yet I still feel a nagging need to check in occasionally. So over the past few years of observation and talking with others I’ve started to gain a better understanding of why people place value on what this select group of folks has to say. My conclusion is that most of the benefit of keeping up with A-listers comes from the “search value”—the sifting, sorting and filtering that A-listers perform when they present their picks for most important concepts or news items of the day.
To dig deeper into this analysis, I wanted to quantify things a bit. So I decided to take a look at a full week’s worth of entries for a few of my favorite A-list peeps. For my experiment I chose three blogging rockstars:
- Dave Winer / Scripting.com - early blogger, and inventor of many important acronyms
- Robert Scoble / Scobleizer - technical evangelist at Microsoft
- Steve Rubel / Micro Persuasion - innovator in bringing social media together with PR
- Summary and/or link to another story, blog post or item of interest
- Self promotion / personal
- Company plug
- Issue analysis or commentary
- Original reporting or scoop
- Product info / how-to
Note: bars indicate number of posts for the category.
The A-listers are viewed by many as pundits or pontificators – but from my perspective these guys are not actually putting forth a whole lot in the way of declarative statements or analysis (at least not through their blogs). In fact I’d say they’re acting more like radio DJ’s (playing attractive mixes of someone else’s original content), rather than artists. (Note: I'm going to chime in on podcasting in a later post)
Although most of them are very intelligent, they’re really not using a blog as a platform for conveying intelligent thoughts – they are primarily routing people to other content, sometimes providing summary information.
Now keep in mind, this is just one flavor of A-list blogger. There are certainly other bloggers, especially outside of the technology industry echo chamber, who are writing from a more journalistic or analytical perspective (e.g. Daily Kos, Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, et al); but for the most part, the A-listers in my industry are simple, useful link brokers. My sense is that the list of most widely read blogs will change dramatically over the next 5 or so years. Even though Technorati is tracking 783 million blogs, and MSN Spaces has 96 gajillion active bloggers, we are still in the early adopter phase of blogging’s life. It makes sense that blog industry types are the most widely read in this early stage. However, as blogs become more mainstream, the A-list will be dominated by traditional journalists, politicians and celebrities. Millions of people will eventually subscribe to Chris Rock’s RSS feed, far less to Rubel’s. (Sorry Steve, Micro Persuasion's relative traffic will ultimately be micro-sized ;))
As the medium becomes more widely accepted, appropriately packaged for a consumer audience, and fully tracked and analyzed, it will be interesting to see who are the most popular personalities perched atop the long tail.
