March 19, 2004
the gapingsphere
Clay Shirky, who I am a great fan of, writes about The Power Curve: “Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality.”
Basically it means that in any community sphere, a disproportionately small amount of members get a disporortionately large slice of the pie.
A good example would be: in Hollywood 20% of the actors make 80% of the money (or whatever). I’ve heard a 20/80 ratio is quite normal in most economic spheres.
Another example would be “The Blogosphere”, though with that it often seems more like 2% of the bloggers get 98% of the traffic. Heh– and studying all this would be what I call “Blogospherics ™” (Yeah, I coined the term, as far as I know).
You know the scenario. An uber-popular blogger like Instapundit writes something. We go “Oh, Cool” and immediately write in our blogs “Instatpundit said X. Instapundit rocks!” etc.
Next thing you know, there are 10,000 people out there telling everyone how great Instapundit is.
And this process is repeated all the way down the food chain to ever-lesser degrees. The higher up on the food chain, the more people are out there singing your praises.
Welcome to the Power Curve, O Willing Participant.
Now there’s no rule saying you have to combat this, nor should you necessarilly want to. There’s nothing wrong with posting the same links as everyone else (“Yes! We’re all individuals!!”). However for me, after a year of watching the same blogs go by, it’s starting to get old. I want to bring it all closer to home. I want to talk about the people I actually know (and vice versa) are doing, not just rant on about some A-Lister pundit in Virginia.
Goodbye, Blogosphere. Hello, Gapingsphere.
Good good. I’ve read about seven to ten different blogs over the last three years (I mean regularly, although not all of them at the same time!) and a reason to give up on any of them has usually been that all the entries are repeated from one to the next, to the next, to the.…
Hi — lots to say, I’ll attempt brevity:
1. Brilliant blog. It is highly worrying that the satire expressed on the cards seems to articulate my own dealings at work, with women..
2. Thank you for linking my site earlier today. Being fairly new to blogging, recognition is gratefully received.
3. On Blogospherics. Nice touch! I think blogging has become so prolific because each one is an uncensored individual voice that contributes in a shared almost communal experience (i.e. your response to the Spanish bombs).
4. On the mass-market. I would imagine that the “power law” dynamic will ultimately reflect the quality of the blog rather than the frequency of its updates. Personal blogs that only regurgitate the aggregator links may not achieve loyalty or long-term popularity.
5. Popularity is the only measure of a blog’s success.
6. So far as I’m aware, the majority of blogs have “authentic” voices (apart from belledujour which is fiction). I define authentic as distinct from commercial.
7. It stands to reason that we all need to refresh the blogroll from time to time. Unless we discover the sparkling insights of a modern-day Jane Austen (an example of an authentic, high quality, commentator); the links or love life of an everyday blogger will eventually lose their appeal.
“5. Popularity is the only measure of a blog’s success.”
Actually Michael, I compeltely disagree. The success of a blog is defined by what one wants out of doing it.
ha! Sorry, work in progress. Point 5 was from Clay Shirky’s power curve article. I think the definition of success is the key.
As far as I’m aware, the official indicators (technorati, blogosphere etc) are only based on popularity. What I’m getting at is the possibility that as blogging matures, mass-market success should start to see that the quality of a blog is what matters.
By quality I include the unique value/voice of the blog (“thought leadership”) which to a great extent depends on whether the author achieved their goals.
In my scenario, Jane Austen’s blog would attract an audience because of its quality. It would become a major influence and source of new ideas to the blogging community. It would attract greater popularity than those blogs with a tendency to mimic those higher in the foodchain (the blogdex, ecosystem example).
My definition of success would be the “thought leadership” of a blog acknowledged by the only tangible measure, its audience. I don’t think you can ignore the audience when a blog is meant to be read.
“Thought Leadership” is hard to define…
I dunno. I wouldn’t say my blog is huge in terms of traffic or daily visitors. But if you ask what percentage of the blogoshphere know about my work and think of it favorably, it’s not bad at all.