Comments on: In the Blogging World You Don’t Have Sex on the First Date

By: B:datenbrei » Blog Archive » readinglist backlog as of today

B:datenbrei » Blog Archive » readinglist backlog as of today — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:07:44 +0000

[...] dont have sex… seems like a nice posting that helps understand how the web of trust in blogosphere works [...]

By: Ric

Ric — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 07:19:00 +0000

Whatever Scott’s complaints about your misunderstanding, your point (and Michael G’s) about people complaining that no-one reads their blog is somewhat self-serving - maybe they don’t have anything interesting to say yet (like me) - but if you’re looking for attention I’d suggest that blogging isn’t the way to go about it. Scott should read Hugh’s post:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/002173.html
- but perhaps he’d just call Hugh a gatekeeper (he certainly gets a lot of link love!).

By: Michael G. Richard

Michael G. Richard — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 02:59:30 +0000

Great post! Very insightful.

I’m tired of hearing bloggers complain that nobody reads their blog. Just create value, lots of it, consistently, and they will come. Don’t get discouraged after a few months… It’s like compound interest; it’s slow at first but worth it in the long run.

By: J. Jeffryes

J. Jeffryes — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 21:35:46 +0000

Part of what obfuscates the truth here is that there are multiple overlapping trust systems. How do you find information?

1. Google
2. Links from something you found on Google
3. Links from something you already trust

The third is the most powerful, and the most trusted, but the first is the most used. Why? Because at this stage of the internet, you don’t necessarily have a trusted source for every topic imaginable. If you want to know about lawn gnomes, and you don’t already have a blog/site/forum on lawn gnomes bookmarked, you turn to Google.

Part of the idea of blogs is that they become virtuous networks that link based on quality and trust, which creates value for the reader. I’d rather follow a link from TechCrunch than some random blog on Technorati. But there is a limit to the subjects that trusted blogs can link to, because they are run by humans with limited time.

There is also a limit to how many blogs you can read in a day, which makes the focused searching of Google more useful, even if the links it produces are less trusted. Hence you get this battle over blogs linking to each other, which improves their findability in Google, which breaks the whole model of the virtuous system.

Frankly, I’d like to see some kind of “Personal Google” where each of us could have a search engine that stores our list of trusted links, and our list of trusted friends, and when we search returns based on level of trust (ie: how many of our friends or friends of friends trust that link, and how many degrees of separation are between them and us). del.icio.us and Squidoo are steps in this direction, but not necessarily the ultimate form of it.

By: bgrier

bgrier — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:43:16 +0000

Read what you said, but to my thinking, the gatekeeper is really the search engine. How you rank in their algorithms can dictate your visibility.

Though, if you do crank out the wordcount, as you said, the chance that you actually say something intersting increases.

good post.

By: The Fluid Imagination Blog » Where my scout at?

The Fluid Imagination Blog » Where my scout at? — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:37:51 +0000

[...] I think this is the way to go. Let the network do the filtering. Get rid of the gatekeepers. As Johua Porter writes in an interesting post over on Bokardo: The answer to these questions [of attention] will come from the network, I think. Look to the new companies that are thriving: Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Netflix. These companies are harnessing their network of users to provide valuable, personalized recommendation systems that exist outside of any of the Old Media. They’re replicating our individual authority models to the point where content becomes more important than the media outlet from which it came. The amazing potential of Web 2.0 is that it distributes authority at the personal level. The next time you get a movie recommended to you from one of your friends on Netflix, think about how much more valuable that is than some review pumped through the Old Media. Did you know that roughly 2/3 of movies rented on Netflix come from recommendations?…However, even though Netflix creates a wonderful tool for modeling authority, it won’t be the authority itself. No, authority will lie in individual people whom we trust, who happen to use the same systems that we do. [...]

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:28:02 +0000

Thanks for the reply, Scott. I admit that the way I wrote this post was in bad form, and I appreciate that it wasn’t the best way to make my point.

So let’s have that more sober conversation…

By: Scott Karp

Scott Karp — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 02:22:57 +0000

Josh, I’ve done my fair share of rubbing people the wrong way — but I’ve also made a lot friends with people who have disagreed with me out of the gate. There’s a lot of asinine behavior in the blogosphere, but there’s also a lot of magnanimity. (If you go back and read my post, you’ll see I made a special point of thanking other bloggers who gave me the benefit of the doubt, and with whom I became friends.)

It would be fun to have a more sober conversation about the social dynamics of blogging.

I hope you’ll allow me to point out, though, that bloggers need to focus on people and relationships even after they get established. We can always use more friends.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 02:00:21 +0000

I know you won’t believe this Scott, but I actually had thought about using the metaphor before I ran into your set of posts…I apologize profusely for any offense taken.

By: Scott Karp

Scott Karp — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 01:33:11 +0000

Josh (or should I say Porter — what’s with the formality?) — I’m actually not having any trouble getting linked, if you check out Technorati (and thanks for your link, BTW). But I’m glad your mis-reading of my post could serve as a platform for you to pontificate with such a cleverly salacious metaphor. (It’s so much fun to be clever, isn’t it?)

The point of my post (which you clearly didn’t read to the end before your mind turned to sex, but whatever turns you on) is that there are inevitably gatekeepers in any media system. If their weren’t, we’d be living in a state of complete chaos. The questions I posed at the end of my post, which wasn’t in the least about getting links, is whether gatekeepers in new media will have any sense of social responsiblity.

And are “people” new to blogging? Are you suggesting that the Old Media system wasn’t based on people and relationships? The notion that relationships matter is hardly a blinding insight.

Maybe you should do your readers a favor and think more about the deeper implications of the revolution in media.

But then again, (cheap) sex sells.

By: Peter Caputa

Peter Caputa — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 01:22:16 +0000

Amen, brother! Great post.