Scott Karp, in In Media, Only Ideas Matter:

“So I don’t think that blogging and Web 2.0 will destroy culture — it will burn hot with a lot of valueless activity but will ultimately fade to the soft glow of true value. I have faith in the power of ideas and the power of human insight — and I have faith that talent will always find a way to be heard above the noise (no matter how loud it gets in here).”

Derek Powazek on gatekeepers:

“So now, my fellow bloggers, I beseech you: Ignore the numbers. Ignore the lists. Blog what you love and the rest will follow. Everything else is just noise.”

One lens through which to look at the recent innovation in the memetracker space is frustration. If you look at where the frustration is in how we track memes (ideas), you can get a decent picture of where the innovation is going. If you want to predict the future, find the frustration!

Like an antelope eating grass on the Kalahari, grazing is eating small quantities of food at frequent but irregular intervals (Apple Dashboard dictionary). Recently, the term grazing has been adopted to describe our efforts at finding information on the Web. The following is a very general picture of the four types of “grazing” we’ve gone through, or are going through now. Each level had it’s own share of frustration, which led (or is leading) directly to the next level.

Continue Reading: The Evolution of Information Grazing

Dave Rogers, on his attempts to not drive angry:

“In the end, I’m not sure you change the world by competing with other people. Mostly I think you change the world by competing with yourself, to try to be the better person you think you might be.”

So which do you think will be more valuable?

A) Technorati’s generic authority slider (Scoble’s coverage | Technorati)

B) Findory’s personal authority recommendations (Barnett’s coverage | Findory)

Last week, during the Attention podcast with Steve Gillmor, I made the claim that many companies were selling my information without my “explicit consent”. Steve strongly disagreed, saying that by using their service I am agreeing to their policies. In other words, the agreement I make when I use Gmail isn’t just about Gmail, it’s about everything that Google stuffs into their privacy policy, whether or not I’ve read it or understood it.

We were talking about this the other day in the office. Our founder Jared, whose father is a lawyer, said that Steve was technically right, given that “explicit consent” is a legal term and by using a service I am legally bound by their privacy policy. (Jared has a great writeup on privacy policies today on Brain Sparks. He asks: What are we agreeing to? )

Continue Reading: On Why A-plus.net Sucks and Privacy Policies

This is cool, Blog Bridge allows easy publishing of Reading Lists to Web:

“And while you don’t need BlogBridge to do this, we do make it brain-dead-simple. A single checkbox enables the publishing of your Guide (Reading List) to the web. No OPML, no scripting, no FTP, no nuttin.

So in the fun and excitement of Semantic Web and OPML name spaces, and dynamic, meta-dynamic, and hyper-dynamic reading lists, it’s easy to lose sight of the universal appeal of sharing ones enthusiasm.”

Update: Completely changed the post, so updated timestamp.

Reread Clay Shirky’s great Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality. Still as relevant today as when he wrote it:

“Inequality occurs in large and unconstrained social systems for the same reasons stop-and-go traffic occurs on busy roads, not because it is anyone’s goal, but because it is a reliable property that emerges from the normal functioning of the system.”

Lots of folks complain about the A-List bloggers and characterize them as gatekeepers. I don’t feel that the term “gatekeeper” fits. “Authority”, maybe.

But “gatekeeper”, no. What am I being kept from? Where is the gate? If the answer to the former is information and the answer to the latter is an A-lister’s web site, then I don’t buy it. I’ve got complete freedom and choice to listen to who I want to listen to. I’m the one choosing which URLs to type in. Sure, tech.memeorandum has a lot of overlapping people, but those people are talking about things I’m interested in. Tech. When it becomes less valuable to me, I’ll stop reading it. Do I like the fact that A-listers get put on it immediately while I have to work a bit harder….if I answered yes would you believe me? If the answer were yes then our system would be completely different to the extent that we wouldn’t be talking about this.

One difference between A-listers and Z-listers is that A-listers have been better writers over a longer period of time. They articulate their thoughts, build up an audience, and gain a reputation. Let them have it! And let them serve as strong examples of what you can do, if you choose to.

So this is the “that’s the way it is” reply. I can’t come up with another one, because I truly believe that this is a big insight into how humans, talent, and hard work fit together. And yes, complaining about it is a part of it. I complained for a while, and then decided that I wasn’t helping myself, read up on some network theory, and got on with my life. I’m still learning how to do it. I’ve even written some horrible crap lately that I wish I hadn’t, but I’m improving. Slowly.

I, for one, am glad to have passionate people who blog everyday and gain a reputation as an authority in their field. That’s actually what Alex Barnett and I are doing with podcasts. We’re out talking to these people, and having a great time learning from them. Want to know about this whole “attention” thing? Well, we talked to Steve Gillmor about it, certified A-list blogger. He’s the guy who you want to talk to when you start learning about attention. If you don’t like what he says, go write your own blog for 3 years about attention, start leading the discussion, and then Alex and I will come do a podcast. 🙂

I find that the harder I work, the better my future looks. Seems to be one of the few constants in this sea of change.

By the way, it could be a lot worse…

Imagine if rebels and visionaries hadn’t found the Web first.

Adam Green and Danny Ayers joined Alex Barnett and I for a podcast on OPML Reading Lists.

Reading List Podcast with Adam Green and Danny Ayers (11MB .mp3 – Alex’s notes)

We talked about reading lists, dynamic reading lists, and feed grazing. In addition, both Danny and Adam talked at length about the Semantic Web, and how we seem to be building toward it with formats like RSS and OPML.

It’s a solid introduction to this interesting development in feed reading. Enjoy!

Continue Reading: Reading Lists Podcast

Stowe Boyd:

“People are the center of the universe — People are what makes the universe worth paying attention to, not the machinery that we rely on to communicate.”