More stats-blogging and proof of gatekeeping
I hate to bore away what few readers I have, but, sadly, mathematics keeps showing I'm not going to ever get that many in the first place (which again, is the major discouragement to me from launching into a lot of unpaid Google research). Let's do the numbers ...
There was an amusing reference to me in a comment at The Blogging of the President:
Stirling, you are beginning to sound like Seth Finkelstein, also smart and usually ignored.
I like that. So true :-(. Anyway, it was worth 15 referers for readers.
Wonderful compliment at Liza Sabater / Culturekitchen : "Google's new motto : Do no evil (unless there's a profit)"
Seth Finkelstein is the man I read daily for all things truthy about Google.
There might have been a single hit from there (interesting data point, given the Technorati Rank: 3,329).
Some nice mentions in Jon Garfunkel / Civilities: Negotiating for your Social Data:
Google does not clearly indicate which of its results are censored, which have made Seth's research on the company (as well as his pioneering work in censorware description) more unique and valuable.
But just one referred hit.
All of them handily *still* beat from the _The Register_ offhand link two weeks ago old, at 98 referers.
Bonus link: Lis Riba discussing Net Neutrality:
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in statistics | on February 05, 2006 01:55 PM (Infothought permalink)What's truly ironic was this "foresight" was totally based upon studies of past communication technologies in my Social Informatics class. Each was initially heralded as a way of increasing communication and education for the unserved and/or isolated populations. And in the end, they became just another mass media entertaining the lowest common denominator. No matter how open each new medium appears at its introduction, eventually, inevitably, gatekeepers emerge.
For example, when radio first appeared, transmitting equipment was relatively cheap. Radio was seen as a way to connect rural farms to one another and to the larger world. There was plenty of bandwidth for lots of small mom&pop community radio stations. And nowadays, it's mostly Clear Channel. Outside college radio stations it's nearly impossible for upcoming musicians to get on the air without pay-for-play.
What about things like e-mail and usenet? OK, usenet is half dead, but ... while it lasted.
BTW, article in "In These Times" about political blogging sounded a familiar tune(excerpt):
As one of the top women bloggers, Chris Nolan, noted on the PressThink blog, “The barrier to entry in this new business isn’t getting published; anyone can do that. The barrier to entry is finding an audience.”
Elite bloggers can play a key role in generating that audience. As Marcotte points out, “A lot more women are moving up in the Technorati rankings” (Technorati is a search engine for the blogosphere) because A-listers like Duncan Black and Kevin Drum in 2005 made it a priority to promote female bloggers. But when someone like Moulitsas decides to stop linking to other blogs—as he has recently done because he doesn’t want to play “gatekeeper”—or when top bloggers repeatedly cite their fellow A-listers, it has enormous consequences. “It’s pretty darn hard today to break in to the A-list if the other A-listers aren’t linking to you,” says Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article_two/2485/
Ooh, and get a load of the last paragraph:
The Washington Monthly profile of Moulitsas included a revealing quote, in which he expressed disappointment at not being able to fulfill his dream of making it big in the tech industry back in 1998: “Maybe at some time, Silicon Valley really was this democratic ideal where the guy with the best idea made a billion dollars, but by the time I got there at least, it was just like anything else—a bunch of rich kids who knew each other running around and it all depended on who you knew.”
The danger is that many may come to feel the same way about the blogosphere in the coming years.
David - email lists have the problem of "finding an audience". Usenet has the problem that there's no audience (now) - it's very little-used comparatively.
Lis - great article, thanks for pointing it out. And how true :-(.