Slashdot Mirror
Bloggers the Tech World's New Elite?
Carl Bialik writes "Wall Street Journal tech columnist Lee Gomes says that the top tech blogs 'aren't part of some proletarian information revolution, but instead have become the tech world's new elite. Reporters for the big mainstream newspapers and magazines, long accustomed to fawning treatment at corporate events, now show up and find that the best seats often go to the A-list bloggers. And living at the front of the velvet rope line means the big bloggers are frequently pitched and wooed. In fact, with the influence peddling universe in this state of flux, it's not uncommon for mainstream reporters, including the occasional technology columnist, to lobby bloggers to include links to their print articles.'"
No. Next?
-Valiss
The "world" (I use that word loosely) is realizing that it's not only the automatically appointed elitists who's opinion or viewpoint is important. It's coming down to the intelligent individual, who can give a less biased (or sometimes not) and always informative opinion and update on important subject matter to everyday persons. I'd much rather read blogs than find out who Jennifer Aniston is dating now in the latest People.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
The difference is anyone can open a Blog, with little or no skill and a web connection. While you can get a column in the WSJ with little or no skill, you need a whole lot more than a net connection.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Bloggers are not necessarily the world's tech elite, but they are certainly the loudest, the most outspoken and, yes, most of them are the early adopters.
The same (early adopters bit in particular) can be said about social bookmarking users. For instance, less than 1/3 of all Simpy users use IE, and over 40% of them use Firefox. If we assume that early tech adopters are also Firefox and not IE users, then yes, bloggers and social bookmarker are early adopters. But does that make them the elite? Does Linus Torvalds have a blog? Not. Yet.
Simpy
They're just being fadded to death by people who don't understand the technology OMG BLOGOSPHERE OMGOMG!
What it comes down to is reliable respected information sources. Some blogs are excellent, but most are crap...this is to be expected with the low barrier to entry.
Print tech reporters have had it too easy for too long...you had to be print first, which means that the tech reporter for the WSJ or the NYT has to have been in the business for quite a while, and is probably not exactly tech savvy, and certainly not hip. Now those fossils are competing with bloggers, and some of those bloggers are hip, articulate, AND extremely tech savvy, so, of course, they're getting beat down.
What's their conclusion? Is it, we need to hire people like that to do our tech column? No. It's OMG OMG BLOGS RULE BLOGOSPHERE OMG! Blah blah blah. Eventually they'll stop missing the point.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Get off your high horse. It's people like you, who write on the Internet and think they're special for it, that are pushing the whole blog thing. Everyone's excited and writing about it, but also linking to their blog at the end of everything they write online now. So what, you wrote some stuff... It's probably just as homogenous as everything else that's written in any other form.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
I'm not sure I'd go that far, as some of the bloggers in Techland do seem to have a grasp of the fundamentals. Whether I would call them members of the "elite" is debateable. If news organizations are losing out to bloggers, what does that say about the newspeople? And if these bloggers are the "elite", doesn't that mean they'll eventually fall prey to courting by big interests (Microsoft, Oracle, etc.)?
Everyone has an opinion. Anyone can start a blog. Chaos ensues.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
There seems to be a lot of flack towards the author by the slashdot (holds his breath waiting for the collective gasp of surprise)community. In particular seems to be a lot of revulsion towards his use of the word 'elite'. What some have touched on, but people seem to overlook, is the fact that in a sense these people are very much the 'elite' of the information providing world.
Nearly the entire world has a collective distaste for the majority of the established media. However, A-list bloggers, as he describes them, provide an alternative and often informed opinion about specific subject matter. Do I care what ABC news says about the war in Iraq? Not at all. But that blog from a squad commander on the front line in Uzbekistan(sic) about the day to day life of the soldiers under his command and his struggles with his superior officers is damn sure getting a bookmark in my favorites. Maybe I don't care what CNN thinks is the next new gadget to buy. But I DO care what an MIT professor blogs about as exciting projects among his graduate class.
The ultimate difference is that blogging is journalism by the people, for the people. Much like the real media, it is saturated with non-accurate information, but it also has the occasional trade expert who can provide us an internal view on how things actually work, and THAT is elite. Hate the slang, hate the excess, but remember that those kids writing about their D&D games online now will be talking about their business start-up plans in 10 years. There is a lot of room to grow, a lot of room to tangentize, but simply put it is more than a fad. More than a trend. It is a way for people to connect with other people who actually care about something.
PS - I'm not perfect, my opinions are my own, but I share them with the community. Do with it what you will. I did.
When "Elite" and "Blogger" are used in the same sentence, you know we are in more trouble than any of us want to believe.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Much harder to bribe 1000 different bloggers, than to bribe a single news organization. Bullshit. Bloggers have far less to lose, not having spent the last 100 years building a reputation. Most can probably bought for a few trinkets. Microsoft is already paying bloggers for favorable press. Basically, bloggers can be bought for pennies compared to the price of traditional media. With traditional media, you've got to buy millions in advertising space to get them to lie about how good your product is...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Really? I'd think it's much cheaper to buy off 1,000 small-time bloggers than to buy off a news organization. The freebies that companies send out impress Some Blog Dude way more than a jaded tech journalist for a mainstream newspaper.
Plus, if your blog is exposed as a shill for tech companies, just shut it down and open two others! You can live off the corporate freebies and AdSense revenue forever, and you can even purport to count yourself among the "world's new elite."
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The perception is that all blogs are just like LiveJournal/MySpace self-absorbed bitchfests.
Actually I'd say the opposite. People seem to think "blogs" are always those hosted on a standalone website, written by people hoping they'll get a massive audience, and expecting people who don't know them to read it. Hence you get a whole load of "Why should I read crap from someone I don't know" comments everytime Slashdot mentions the word "blog". Most blogs are simply people who use them for things like journalling or communicating with friends. That doesn't make them "self absorbed bitchfests".