Tag Archives: influence

“There is no A list. There is only your list.” – “It’s not about lists. It’s about links.”

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In what seems to be a regular occurrence among A-listers now, Jeff Jarvis, A-list member, in response to a Blogebrity post that questions sucking up to it attempts to deny it exists. Ya know – trying and deny its existence is like trying to deny mathematical reality and human nature.

First, lets get clear on the definition of the blog “A-list” – it is merely a way to label the current batch of most linked bloggers and a way of recognizing their influence – that’s all.

Jeff was almost right when he said: “It’s not about lists. It’s about links.” – but the links are votes that can be culled into a list – or lists. Technorati maintains what is probably the most popular implementation of this list at their site. Another popular implementation of this list can be found at Blogebrity – which has gone so far to divide the list up into an A-list, B-list, and C-list. It may have been done in jest at Blogebrity – but it pretty much exposes bare among the millions of blogs out there who have the most influence – the most meme producing potential – out here.

These lists only matter to those attempting to draw attention (which equates to linkage) to their works/writing/projects. If you aren’t trying to draw attention to in one shape or form – you’re a personal blogger who writes about his or her family for example – or your an artist who could give a fuck what others think – then this list matters little to you and talk of it probably bugs you.

But if you *are* attempting to draw support and attention – this list becomes very important.

Shoot, I once asked for Jeff for a link, but quickly withdrew the request – because – well… I felt wrong asking for a link.

Silly me – I know. But that was a while ago. Recently I asked directly to be included in the Blogebrity list. Yep. I have lost shame. I recognize the value in it. Not to be famous – but to drive attention to work I consider important. Work that requires attention to get momentum.

A-listers typically consider it bad form to directly ask for a link, but Nick and I have had a few great conversations via IM, whether I get a link or not, I still appreciate the communication.

The A-list isn’t an organized group. It isn’t a cabal that conspires in the middle of the night to draw linkage. To think so is pretty ridiculous considering in many cases this list is composed of sites that represent opposite extremes.

It is just a natural occurrence. Human nature. In this case users vote with their links – links they may have (probably have) been found from an influential (heavily linked to blogger) in the first place.

The seminal piece on this behavior remains Clay Shirky’s “Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality“. It’s a must read. It’s funny when A-listers deny the A-list – they don’t link to – or mention – this piece.

Some would argue that the A-list, even if it exists, doesn’t matter. That thousands of D-list links can exceed the value in attention-driving a single A-list link can deliver. Indeed, I think this is true. However, the time it takes to be heard among so many can take much, much longer then what one related A-list link can do in a few hours. The difference can be astronomical and can’t be underestimated.

Some would say that bloggers who need traffic should look elsewhere for attention – their local newspapers for example. I agree 100%. Bloggers seeking attention from bloggers can be fruitless – a good habit of those in the A-list is to use primary sources – mainstream media — even as they deride it. Look at how often Jeff Jarvis is on the TV. If he thought it had no value — he wouldn’t be there.

Some would argue that if something is worthy of attention, well then the A-list will link to it in the first place. I don’t think those who have this influence necessarily have magical powers to discern that.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it – does it make a sound? If a post is blogged and no one links to it – does it get read?

Some would argue that the existence of the A-list is a ‘problem’ to be solved. I don’t think so. That’s like trying to solve human nature. There will always be those in any sphere more influential then others.

Some say they need their feet held to the fire – that A-listers have some kind of responsibility to the rest of the web. That they should attempt to give voice to those that may not have one.

That’s a big question. I think the answer is we ALL have responsibility – but damned if I expect others to do what I won’t. I will vote with my links.

No – the A-list isn’t a “problem” to be solved. It’s something that if stands in the way of getting a message out – needs to be routed around.

Links that can be given can be taken away (very rare – but still doable). Links that can be given can be given to others. The A-list is changeable, and has changed over time. Take a look at this funny parody of the A-list posted a while back. Today that list would be different. Not by much. But still different. Shoot, we could nuke our blogrolls.

There’s a larger web outside of blogs. And there are webs of blogs (MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga) that are not engaged (take a look at Sifri’s latest “State of the Blogosphere” report). Simply making direct contact with the mainstream media can make a huge difference. Tools like del.icio.us and Digg, and sites like Philly Future are emerging all the time to give avenues of expression for folks to share what *they* feel is important to a wide audience. Regardless of what the influencers may say. When these tools get bogged down in false hierarchies – new tools will come along to subvert them as well. It is the way of things.

It’s just technology enabling new expressions of human nature. Not changing it.

And so is engaging, complaining, arguing, conversing, working with, and yes – fighting – those who have influence. Nick wonders what it means to play the A-list game – well there ya go. This is it. And ya know what – those things I’m never going to stop.

Neither should you. No matter what the influencers might say.

Technorati in BusinessWeek

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David Sifry and Technorati in Business Week: Tracking the Blogs:

Q: You say you welcome competition from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, should they decide to offer blog search. Why would you welcome such Net heavyweights as rivals?
A: The larger question is, is it really competition? I look at what Google and Yahoo and other companies in this space are doing, and they’re really fantastic at helping you pick out what’s the best reference site for something. You go to Google and type in wine, and it will tell you the best places to buy wine. But if you really want to find out what the world’s leading wine experts are talking about, Google isn’t really built to do that.

Q: Why can’t they build themselves up to do that with a blog search engine?
A: Well, good luck. We’ve been doing it now for almost three years, and it’s a lot harder than you think. Doing it on a small scale is not terribly difficult. Doing it to scale becomes pretty hard, and every day the blogosphere is growing by leaps and bounds.

The blogosphere today is about 30 times as big as it was three years ago. So just to give you some ideas on what that means: Every single day we’re seeing about 80,000 new people who are starting blogs. And we’re seeing about 900,000 new posts every single day. So that’s about 11 posts every single second that you’ve got to now index, you’ve got to score it, you’ve got to make sense out of all of its relevance, and you’ve got to push it to your servers really, really fast so people can stay up to date with what’s going on.

…Q: You say Google can’t tell you what wine experts are talking about, but Technorati can. How do you do that?
A: When you think about the words that we use when we talk about the Web, we talk about pages, we talk about documents, we talk about directories. What does that mean, the language, the metaphor we use when we think about the Web today?

Q: It’s a print culture metaphor.
A: Exactly. But there’s a long way to go. We’re really trying to do something a little different from that. What Technorati is trying to do is looking at the Web in a different way. And the way that I like to think of it is, it’s like this big river, it’s like this conversation flow. It’s about people and conversations.

Just as Google invented page rank, reordering the way that we sort the Web, what we did was say, “O.K., why don’t we take the same idea and apply it to people.” So the way that Technorati calculates what we call “Net attention” is we look at how many people are linking to you.

…Q: What are you working on that business users might be excited about?
A: First, there’s advertising and sponsorship. Business users can advertise on search results that have something to do with their company.

Second, we’re unveiling a new service in August that’s currently in beta testing that’s geared toward professionals — people who need a deeper view of a company or its products, such as PR people, people in marketing or advertising, financial analysts. [Basically,] people who need to track buzz, how it changes over time, who are the influencers who is talking about their company or their product. These will be subscription products.

“What wins? Attention.”

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ZDNet: Steve Gillmor: “Information will search for you”:

…the news is out. How to say this kindly? Here’s one for Ed Brill: Like Notes, print is dead. And like print, page views are dead. Like Notes, print and the page view model will go down fighting. It will take a long time, as everyone still locked into Notes can tell you.

What wins? Attention. Who, what, and how long. It will take on, supplement, and eventually, supplant search. Information will search for you, not the other way around. How many people, once they switched to AOL on Live8 Day, went back? The same number who switched back from RSS. My friend still hasn’t fired up Bloglines, or Rojo, or iTunes for that matter. But he will. That I’m sure of. It’s a matter of time.

more at Roland Tanglao’s.

It goes both ways

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Dave Winer: Scripting News: 7/10/2005

Now when they fuck us, we have a way of giving them a black mark. A little more metadata, and it’ll start showing up on their bottom line.

I guess you can tell what I think from the title of my post.

When everyone has a blog – only the most linked to – the most popular will have this effect.

Just observe the left and right political blog ecospheres, both are at war – using links – and the reality Google presents is the battleground and prize.

Clay Shirky’s “Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality” is a must read. Folks seem to want to put it out of their minds and deny it exists I think.

via allied: quotes of the day

HonorTags and Citizen Journalism

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Jeff Jarvis’s lists the first duty of a news editor in citizen journalism to “Aggregate, organize, and highlight the best of newsroom and citizen media”.

That’s *exactly* what our volunteer editorial team attempts to do at Philly Future. You can be the judge whether we are successful or not. Doing so requires tools and knowledge to use them. The tools we have are evolving, but are not yet where they should be.

One of the evolving tools we have is the practice of self tagging our own writing and photos with terms that make it easy to aggregate them – to pull them together for use. Folksonomies – collections of these collaborative categorizations – and tools that make use of them – are springing up all over the web

If it wasn’t for this practice, we would have had a near impossible time bringing together our regional web’s coverage of Live 8 . Technorati’s Live 8 aggregator, which brought together a tremendous amount of posts that were tagged as relating to Live 8, and Flickr, which had photos tagged as relating to Live 8, helped to identify relevant posts for review to highlight them at Philly Future.

Our Live 8 Philly coverage will continue to grow long after the event – specifically because of Technorati, Flickr and Philly Future’s own aggregator, which has who we consider the best bloggers in our region in it.

Philly Future attempts to be a tool that brings together the best of our regional web. Opinion, news, information, and more. It’s a daunting task for a volunteer effort. One of the issues we face is finding and attempting to discern if someone is posting something that is a factual news item, or an opinion piece. Reading is the ultimate arbitrator of this, but how to locate these posts initially is very difficult and flawed.

Think about it. How did you find *this* post? Probably from your aggregator. Or another blogger. Maybe a blogroll. What if no one linked to me? What if I had posted a quality piece and had no initial audience among those who are already well read? If I was some feed in a larger aggregator – that no one referenced – this post would easily be missed. Part of the din.

Clay Shirky wrote, way back in 2003, a piece that keeps getting overlooked in some places
“Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality”. Essentially, you must be linked to from those that are already linked to, in order to garner initial attention and traction. Shelley Powers has wrote extensively on this subject.

I took part in a related discussion at Jeff Jarvis’s site the other day. A great quote from Jeff: “I have to constantly kick myself to stop thinking of blogging in big-media terms, to stop judging it by the top of the power law and in silly lists, to stop assuming that bloggers want to do what media does (emphasis mine – Karl), to stop thinking that blogging has to be media, to stop thinking of blogs as publications and remember that they are people.”

Me too. He’s absolutely right. A tool to help combat that is to know a little about what the intent of a blog post is. What is the author attempting to achieve? Share his opinion? Post a news item? Do some activism? Tags can help here.

Look – we can rely on those that are already well linked to for telling us what is the news. For telling us who to read. For telling us what is important. Or we can search. Search for the new voice. Search for the new perspective.

Let those that are creating their own content tell us their intent.

Tags help us to do just that – help us to know the intent of an author. In Technorati, Flickr, and del.icio.us they help us to filter based upon the author’s choice – not some “authority’s”. This helps a host like me find content that I am looking for.

Still we have a long way to go – this volunteer still needs to read far too much to tell ya the truth. And it’s growing by the day.

That’s why I when I saw Dan Gillmor’s post about his group’s concept to help – HonorTags – I became very intrigued and did some thought. I believe – after the team has some discussion – we will use these within Philly Future to help folks identify – for themselves – what they consider the intent of their own writing. I believe it will help readers – and editors – know whether an author wants them to consider a post in different important ways.

Self-tagging is imperfect, for sure. It can be easily abused. And I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject. But I welcome any new tools in my belt that can make life easier. I think this can be one.

“reforming into thousands of cultural tribes”

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Chris Anderson, in his latest post, “Massively parallel culture” says:

…Rather than the scary fragmentation of our society into a nation of disconnected people doing their own thing, I think we’re reforming into thousands of cultural tribes, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests. Whether we think of it this way or not, each of us belongs to many different tribes simultaneously, often overlapping (geek culture and Lego), often not (tennis and punk-funk).

What’s interesting is that the same Long Tail forces and technologies that are leading to an explosion of variety and abundant choice in the content we consume are also helping to connect us to other consumers, whether through Amazon and Netflix reviews, blogs, p2p networks or playlist sharing.

Here goes how I see it: Web 1.0 technologies helped us to define our own personal niches by letting us filter: find and consume entertainment, goods, services information exactly to our liking. This empowered us to focus our attention and consumption to our own idiosyncratic tastes. Web 2.0 technologies enable us to communicate and connect with others who share these preferences, concerns, and joys – but only if we are so motivated.