Feb 16
I’m going to be a bad boy and link directly to Doc “the reluctant A-Lister” Searls recent post about gatekeepers from which those who are interested can read about the whole sordid saga… I just wanted to jot down a couple of personal thoughts for later:
- You can’t have the value of the attention economy without necessarily recognizing– if not creating– gatekeepers and hierarchy
- Links don’t necessarily subvert or create hierarchy– they are tools capable of both
- Any conversation where “shifting” and “shifting fast” entails a discussion of blogs that move from within the Top 100 to the Top 200 and back again– out of <em>28 million+</em> blogs– needs to take a step back and think about the true size and scope of the discussion. Shifting from Top 100 to Top 10,000 would be significant! Top 100 to 200 is nowhere close to moving out of the A-List domain
- It’s good to see reality taking hold and the realization that many sides of this discussion are right. There are gatekeepers; people who once felt slighted by them can find themselves in that role. Gatekeeping isn’t necessarily a positive or negative attribute, it just is. There’s a whole lot riding on some very slippery semantics here.
- No one is forced to read the A-List, no one is forced to link to them. My blog is decidedly Q-list and it’s all about me, me, me… except when it isn’t. It doesn’t get referred to by the A-Listers, except when it does. And my definition of A-List is probably very different from yours– it includes Doc, but it also includes Alan, Brian, D’arcy, Doug, and another Brian, to name just a few– because it’s my choice and my construction… no one feeds it to me. In that respect, the web really is the wide-open space Doc says it is.
I wish I could remember how I tapped into this discussion…oh, yes, it was this morning when I was scanning one of the blogs I have my Bloglines feeds that had piled up - because I don’t read them regularly. So it was complete coincidence that I knew what you were talking about when I began reading this post. Most of us probably constitute a network of mini-mutual admiration societies because we are focused and lack the time to devote loads of attention to what “everyone else” is doing. I read the A-list blogs only sporadically, and mainly out of a distanced curiosity similar to what I bring with me to NFL football and CSI on television - both experiences I could easily do without; good for tapping into the cultural mainstream. I knew when I chose the name for my blog that I’d never get any large amount of attention with it, but I’m grateful for the audience I do have. I’m flattered to have made your list, Chris, especially noting the others who are on it. Count me in as content to be merely one more voice singing into the void. Gatekeepers don’t affect the goats that graze in open pasture.
Good post.
Thinking the open pasture is subjects, not people.
Think about the A-list subjects. Celebrity. Scandals. Politics. Sports. Fashion.
Few of the blogosphere’s A-listers are in the same zip code with any of those. Huffington, maybe. No time to look.
I’m thinking a time will come when leverage in a subject will matter more than leverage as a URL.
More later on my blog. Just wanted to say that much here.
Thanks!
Doc
yeah - good post! A-List is a relative thing, I think. It’s not about popularity, but content and connections. That is the coolest thing about this Web 2.0 / Read/Write Web stuff - we don’t have to just sit back and consume what Established Big Media deems to label as “good stuff”. Long tail, and stuff. Exciting times…
My own personal A-List has over 100 members in it, including you, Chris.
[...] I don’t normally post about technology tools because that isn’t my area of expertise. I’m more aligned with English teachers than technology specialists. But I can learn from anyone. It wasn’t very long after I began blogging (about a year ago) that I noticed there is a blogger food chain. Chris, who regrettably (for me) seems to be retiring from public life, commented on this a while back in a post called Gatekeeperology. Links are the currency that makes blogging work as a knowledge resource. The reason I’m writing on Borderland is to bear witness to my experience as a teacher in a confusing era in which political pressure on teachers and students is working to narrow our focus, while ironically, technological advances are opening new possibilities for making meaning. Sharing classroom experience and threads of ideas with others who can help us make sense of it all is immeasurably valuable. It’s good to be linked. [...]
[...] Internet is like a global brain. That global brain, like the one in your head, includes hierarchies and forms of top-down control. At the same time, the most general decisions about the goals of the [...]