Why Tech Blogging is Broken

In the classic struggle between being relevant now vs.being original, the laws of motion and momentum tend to favor being relevant.

That is why we hold original thinkers in such high regard, but usually only after we know it is safe to do so. So, tip your hat to guys like Dave Winer, who repeatedly suffers the slings and arrows while waiting for the rest of us to climb out on the limb with him after we know it's not going to break.

I was working till recently for a startup that is in a supposedly "hot" area (technically, that is). A couple of things I learned: >>A-list bloggers can drive lots of traffic towards the company's website. >>Companies place ads on friendly blogs, even critical ones . >>There are bloggers that companies will wine and dine to get some good press. Contrary to popular belief,that BigCo's don't understand blogging, they go out of their way to make these A-list bloggers happy. I am not taking about folks like Scoble who are generalists. These are bloggers who specialize in specific technologies. >>Unfortunate Fact - there is astroturfing going on in tech support and discussion forums.There are some slime balls who are very good at it, and get paid to do it.Companies use these shady characters both to plug their products and downplay their competition. >>If the customer puts your product through a genuine technical evaluation, no amount of plugging by A-list bloggers can save you, unless your product is good. But, then, there is shady enterprise style "high-touch" sales, that bypasses the end-user.

"I am not sure what can be done to fix it with the exception of no longer reading Techmeme.com... This means reading the 600+ blogs I used to read each day instead of going straight to Techmeme.com."

I think I've spotted this guy's problem, and I'm not surprised that he can't find a technical solution. What this poor fellow needs is an intervention, a 12-step program, and possibly some methadone.

Here's a rule of thumb: Dunbar's number is approximately 150, so if you are reading significantly more than 150 RSS feeds, you are indiscriminately reading the work of complete strangers. Delete your feeds and start over.

[footnote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number]

I don't understand the article? What is broken about ranking the output of established bloggers higher than other output? Is he implicating that those bloggers are bad at picking good stories?

Also he seems very much caught up in Google-think, as if PageRank was the only way to do search.