Sean Carton at ClickZ overquoted me this morning, putting more spin on my words (but linking to _me_ as representing all bloggers, which is nice.)
Weblogs Inc. founder and AOL exec Jason Calacanis kicked up a firestorm recently when he declared he was going to start paying the top posters on social networking and news sites $12,000 per year to seed stories on the new Netscape. "It is a disastrous community decision!" declared bloggers. Social news is dead!
I never said that social news was dead. In fact, I was saying that social news readers would see Netscape as a place that paid people to generate bulk content over quality content. These users would take their business elsewhere.
Indeed, Social Bookmarking and Blogging rely on some basic common elements - superusers, commercial media, and honesty.
In the end, Sean and I come to agreement, but there's a few things in his path that I'd like to extend the conversation of:
The Role of the Superuser.
The current crop of social news and video-sharing sites are dominated by a relatively small number of posters anyway. A recent analysis of digg's top posters reveals most of the stories that make it to the home page are put there by the same 60 people. Of course, no story that makes it to the home page gets there on its own. It has to be voted on by the other site users.
The same can be true of companies that make money, big time politicians, and snack foods. There is always a short list of superusers. Be they people with large political networks like the Bush Family, companies with large reach like Dow-Corning, or an unbelievable number of recognizable brand names like Frito-lay. These are all voted on by "site users" to gain popularity. They are all placed in the position to vote by superusers.
So, it is obvious that superusers have social value. They have existed at every point and at every level of human endeavor. They are the committed ones that let the rest of us focus on something else, while still getting the luxury of participating in a working system. We can't all be superusers in every system.
When you pay superusers, they become staff. Staff and superusers have wildly differing expectations of themselves and the systems they are supporting. Worse yet, when you tell a large group of superusers (a community) that a very small number of them will be "compensated", they become competitors. When you are a community, your goal is to promote the community. When you are competitors, your goal is to promote yourself within the context of the community.
Sean says:
Blogs have worked the same way. Popular blogs are so because people want to read them. In the ultimate democracy of the Web, popularity comes because someone wants to read what you're writing... at the individual blogger level, at least. Sure, advertising your blog, networking to get links from other blogs, and promoting your blog can help it get noticed and gain popularity. But unless the content continues to draw people, all the promotion in the world isn't going to work. There are just too many choices.
Absolutely. And this social though process is what makes the whole system work.
Blogs and social news sites have become so popular because they offer an alternative to the increasingly discredited commercial media. Bloggers' authentic voice and most blogs' perceived non-commercial nature allowed them to become dominant new media sources in a very short time.
Blogs and social bookmarking are popular because they filter and discuss the tsunami of information we are soaked by daily. Blogs are popular because they are human, they are conversation and they are a map through the mediascape. Yes, some of their allure is that they are independent of discredited commercial media - but blogs couldn't exist without commercial media. Much of what we discuss comes out of commercial media.
Be Honest or Don't Be
Sean ends his article by making me his lifelong friend:
For us marketers, the lesson is this: we're not in control of our messages anymore. Sure, we can pay bloggers, bankroll folks to post to social news sites, pay people to post to forums, or try other tactics, but these can only serve to influence, not control, the message. ... For marketers and brand managers used to controlling their brands and messaging in the marketplace, this new reality can be a tough pill to swallow, but it's the world we're in. Dealing with it means being everything that makes good blogs and social news posters successful: credible, valuable, authentic, high quality, entertaining, and in touch with your audiences. It means messages aren't enough anymore. You actually have to walk the walk, provide quality products and services, respect your customers, and be honest. And you can't stink. Period. The days of control are over.
The tough pill here is that blogs slow the rapid truth entropy of spin. PR people are / were spin doctors. In the Dr. No or Dr. Jeckle or Dr. Frankenstein sense. The wisdom of the crowds potentially represented by the blogosphere is immense. Sean is right, if you provide a crappy service, blogs will let you know immediately.
Where Blogs are Failing
Blogs are failing in that we are not providing depth. We are not discussing things for weeks, or even days, it seems. If there's one thing Jason's tossing change to the buskers of Social Bookmarking did, was it gave me (at least) some to focus on for a few days.
Blogs and bloggers need to slow down, think more about what they are writing, and think less about the act of publishing and more about the act of conversing. We need to walk our own walk about the conversation itself. Right now, blogging is the conversation equivalent of speed dating.
You can start right now by commenting to this post or to try to comment once a day while reading through the blogs that interest you. Blog supposed to be conversations, respond! And blog authors, always reply to a response. Always respect your readers. And when a conversation is interesting - summarize it in a future blog post.
These things alone would very much alter the life span of the conversations in the blog world.
Conclusion
Blogs and Social Bookmarking serve as filters to make the our current deluge of information relevant and comprehensible. Superusers are those that provide content into either stream. These users comes with a variety of agendae but, in the end, only benefit by providing for a healthy community. The community at large is much larger than the supply of superusers. Siphoning them off by wooing them with beer money will have ramifications beyond merely Netscape or Digg.
For its part, the blogging community needs to step up to the plate and increase its relevance by increasing its depth of conversational analysis. Companies are feeling beholden to blogs because blogs have been historically nasty. They will feel a need to woo, more than a need to get into an honest conversation, if the conversation is merely critical. If the conversation offers valid suggestions for improvement, what company wouldn't want free focus group advice?
Photo: Dave Wicks
Technorati Tags: web 2.0, blogs, social bookmarking, jason calacanis, sean carton, community_indicators, cyberspace, nakedconversations, naked conversations
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