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Techmeme and the “A-list” canard

Started by mathewi · 1 year ago

As a fan of Techmeme, I try to stick up for the site whenever someone writes about how it’s just an “echo chamber,” or how it’s dominated by the “A-listers” — so it’s nice to see a little empirical da ... Continue reading »

15 comments

  • sarahintampa

    1 year ago

    Wow, thanks for the compliment! :)
    reply
  • mathewi

    1 year ago

    My pleasure, Sarah.
    reply
  • Robert Seidman

    1 year ago

    Not enough attention gets paid to the blogs that mostly nobody ever has heard of? Uh...duh!

    Sorry, but c'mon. *Of course* it's that way, what other way could it be!? People linking to new blogs is a big part of the discovery process, but there's a reason Louis Gray is now ubiquitous and it's not just that he's smart -- it's that he worked hard at ubiquity.

    At this point, content would have to be extra, extra, good and -- and this is the key -- *unique* to just wind up finding eyeballs by itself. There's just not much like that out there and there never will be much. Mourning that it works that way will not change that it works that way.

    The lion's share of the burden must fall on the person producing the content. Some people are much better at "gaining share" than others, and that is not necessarily (or probably even usually) purely a function of the quality of content.
    reply
  • Stketcher

    1 year ago

    Like you say Lous Gray is proof that people outside the called A-list bloggers can get into techmeme, another example is the SheGeeks blog that has gotten around 3 articles show up on techmeme has well.

    While some of the ranting thats going around may be true all you need to do is work hard, be consistent and stop ranting.
    reply
  • allen

    1 year ago

    im about to bust a nut, seriously.
    reply
  • AJ

    1 year ago

    Correction! Louis Gray didnt discover Yuvi. Scoble discovered him 2 years ago!
    reply
  • AJ

    1 year ago

    reply
  • mathewi

    1 year ago

    Thanks, AJ -- my mistake. I guess Louis re-discovered him then :-)
    reply
  • Louis Gray

    1 year ago

    It's not a contest. :-) I didn't claim I discovered Yuvi. But I have been working with Yuvi on his new StatBot site, and was first to talk about it when he launched. But yes, Yuvi was trading blogs with Scoble before I did.
    reply
  • Scobleizer

    1 year ago

    I'm rediscovering all sorts of things since Louis came along. Heheh. If I cared about stuff like this I'd drive myself nuts. I love that Yuvi is getting more attention. The dude is smart.
    reply
  • Seth Finkelstein

    1 year ago

    BAH HUMBUG!

    Let me know how many links I can post without triggering a spam-trap, this utter nonsense is a FAQ by now.

    Here, have one: Jon Garfunkel: "The New Gatekeepers"
    http://civilities.net/TheNewGatekeepers
    reply
  • mathewi

    1 year ago

    Thanks as usual, Seth -- although the "bah, humbug" routine is getting
    a little old, don't you think? Time for some new material.
    Obviously, none of this is to say that there aren't "gatekeepers" or
    whatever terminology you want to use -- I've admitted that countless
    times in similar posts. My point is that there is still plenty of
    room for content from unknowns or little-knowns to emerge and be
    recognized. That's good, isn't it?
    reply
  • Seth Finkelstein

    1 year ago

    Don't have a cow, man.

    I would in fact claim your statement ("content from unknowns") is false, except in a trivial way. That is, blog-evangelists don't say: "With all the newspapers and trade-journals being published, with all the 24/7 news programs, there is still plenty of room for content from unknowns or little-knowns to emerge and be recognized in the mainstream media - and look, x% of people quoted or sound-bited come from The Long Tale!"

    Have another link:

    Nick Carr: "The Great Unread"

    http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/08/the_g...
    reply
  • mathewi

    1 year ago

    First of all, saying that it's false "except in a trivial way" means
    that it's true, but you think the parts that are true are trivial. I
    disagree. And secondly, your comparison to blogs and being quoted in
    the mainstream media is ridiculous. I reject it on the grounds that
    it is irrelevant, incorrect and -- most of all -- boring.
    reply
  • Seth Finkelstein

    1 year ago

    Aye Carumba!

    By "except in a trivial way", I meant you could give it a meaning where it was true, but that meaning would be trivial, depending on what you meant by "plenty of room". There are almost by definition few high attention slots, but it would likely be said to mean something like "lots of chances to win the (attention) lottery" (even though very few people do win), and that's what I'd mean by trivial.

    The idea of the comparison is how one could construct similar spurious reasoning to "prove" the MSM is open, democratic, anyone can break-in (pointing to the few people who do), etc.

    Oh, have another link:

    Shelley Powers: "Guys Don't Link"

    http://burningbird.net/connecting/guys-dont-link/
    reply

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