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Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Link farm arting in the blogospire 
| | Everybody's talking about Techmeme today...again. Scoble says he has all the inbound links and ought to be the top story about whatever the top story is at the moment. He's said basically the same thing before. Here's the problem with that: Scoble could write a post about arm farting and 30 or 40 people would immediately link to it, hoping he might link back. Scoble has more yes men than Michael Corleone and Michael Arrington combined. |
| | In other words, all those people linking wildly to Scoble aren't doing so because they think he is the world's greatest authority on arm farting. They are simply holding out their hands eagerly and hoping Scoble will shake it (via a link) as he walks by. Getting a link from Scoble is almost as good as getting arrested with Paris Hilton. It's not Scoble's fault he's the king of the blogosphere any more than it's Paris Hilton's fault she's in jail. |
| | Strong stuff. He continues, |
| | All of which means that, at least at the top of the blogosphere, links are less about authority and more about popularity and power. Power to control admission to the in-crowd. Just like in life, some go radical and reject the system that excluded them. Others waive expectantly, hoping they'll get called over to play. Most are somewhere in between. |
| | And some don't bother to play at all. Yours truly, for example. I don't follow Techmeme, Digg, Memeorandum or TechCrunch any more than I once didn't follow Daypop or Slashdot. Somewhere way back there I began following topics more than bloggers. Last couple of weeks or so, for example, I followed Supernova and VRM, together, because VRM was a subject of special interest to me that was discussed at Supernova. If in the course of looking into topics I run into one of the popularity-following (or -making) sites, I'll go there. But I don't start there. |
| | Some bloggers I do check out from time to time. Kent is one of them — though I found his Arm Farting post by way of Seth Finkelstein, whose is another of the blogs I check occasionally. |
| | But none of this is a sound basis for deciding what is top news and what isn't. There needs to be more to it. There needs to be a balance between popularity, authority, freshness and inclusion. Most of the target audience for Techmeme already subscribe to Scoble's blog. They are at Techmeme looking to see what others are saying about various topics. And let's not kid ourselves, a ton of Techmeme readers are bloggers who want to be included in the conversation. To remove the opportunity for inclusion would change Techmeme in a fundamental and adverse way. |
| | The bad news here is that news has become too personal. Popularity, authority and even inclusion are all personal variables. They matter in some cases, but in too many other cases they change the subject from what to who. Our thirst for Google juice has enlarged to include elixers from Technorati, TechMeme, Digg and a dozen others, all of which are variants on Googles' original PageRank, which regarded inbound links as "votes" of a sort. Every one of these valuation engines has its own weighting system, of course. But many links from many bloggers does not true authority make, especially when the system is gamed in the manner that Kent nails rather well. We've gone from SEO (search engine optimization) to BVE (buzz volume elevation). The results are often useful, but they can also turn the blogosphere into high school. In this respect is it the worst thing that Techmeme has turned, as Scoble puts it, "pro"? I don't have an answer, by the way. I'm just asking. |
| | What matters most is relevance, especially if what you want to do is constructive. I don't know how to bring relevance to the fore, but I think we need to try. To its credit Google Blogsearch defaults to sort by relevance (they also sort by date, the current default at Technorati), but it misses many of the results that Technorati catches, which is why I tend to use Technorati more. Also, I'm not sure what Google means by "relevance" is actually what's most useful for the reader's purposes. |
Digging deeper
| | My main regret about Bloomberg's taking over the role of Independent Candidate is that it is not being done in a way that builds small-d democratic capacity to influence the process—especially at a time when the Internet makes "sideways-up" organizing more viable than ever. Bloomberg's billions give a lot of people an excuse to stay home instead of doing the grassroots work to build a broad challenge to the entrenched interests that dominate the major parties. In that, he is bad news for the vainglorious efforts of Unity08, the brainchild of a couple of well-meaning political consultants who are seeking to marshal a million cyber-delegates to nominate an independent slate for 2008. He doesn't need them. |
| | Yes, the blogs are talking about Bloomberg today, but he's talking at us, not with us. He may have made his money selling high-priced computer terminals and data, but his approach to technology and the Internet is all top-down. His vaunted "311" universal phone number has indeed improved city services, but the communication is all one way. In 2001 Bloomberg capped his $74 million campaign by mailing a videotape of his final campaign commercial to every household; in 2005 his re-election campaign had the best micro-targeting database services that money could buy. If anything, his entry onto the edge of the playing field will further accelerate the presidential money chase, giving an advantage to buckmeisters like Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney over other contenders, putting serious pressure on Obama and draining funds from down-ballot candidates as a side effect. |
| | Micah is one of many good people building new political machinery: the kind that relates and converses, rather than merely transacts — the kind that's about better governance and not just better elections. As the 08 "races" heat up, and both mainstream media and blogs turn to sports and war metaphors to depict democratic processes, we need to dig deeper. We need to build and not just cheer. |
| | As Steve Urquhart puts it, The prospect of a Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton presidential succession is a damning commentary on the health of our political process. Individual merits — like leadership, ideas, and character — matter less than simply being handed the keys to the political machine. Instead of citizens having broad electoral choices, political machines simply pass around presidencies like cold sores during spring break. Steve is a Republican from Utah. That fact matters far less than what he's trying to do to politics, which is make it truly democratic. Follow his blog. |
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