Bloggers the Tech World's New Elite? 224
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.'"
Bloggers the Tech World's New Elite? (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
The Difference... (Score:4, Insightful)
Self proclaimed Elite (Score:4, Insightful)
The same (early adopters bit in particular) can be said about social bookmarking users. For instance, less than 1/3 of all Simpy [simpy.com] 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.
Human nature again remains resistent to technology (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Bloggers the Tech World's New Elite? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bloggers the Tech World's New Elite? Huh? They are just a bunch of geeks capitalizing on the ignorant mass media who have popularized blogging as of late. Blogging will become a niche again in a couple of years when the media and the public lose interest.
Re:If you define 'Elite' as... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Blogs Are Here To Stay And The Impact Will ODee (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you define 'Elite' as... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Misdirected Anger (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
l33t (Score:1, Insightful)
there's a reason they're in front of the line (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies place at the front of the line whoever talks about their product or service in the most flattering ways. "Web loggers" are well known for floofy, heavily biased stuff- and they don't have all that training in nasty things like ethics that get in the way of corporate agendas. Further, I'd guess the percentage that report to an editor to be in the realm of less than 1%, and I'd guess that 90% of that 1% are "mainstream" journalists working for "mainstream" media.
I find it absolutely no surprise they're placed in front of journalists.
And no, "web loggers" are NOT journalists. Journalists CAN have a "web log"- there's a very important distinction there. "Web loggers" love to complain about "traditional" or "mainstream" media and often compare themselves to "mainstream" media figures nobody takes seriously, in an attempt to legitimatize themselves. The extent to which they willfully discredit a profession is absolutely atrocious. When was the last time you hear someone complain about "mainstream" mechanical engineers, for example? There is a reason we educate people in professional fields and place stock in those educations. They're not infallable, but far as I can tell- they're a lot more reliable and trustworthy than the "web logging" community as a whole. For example, I've found numerous instances of "web log" entries linked to by slashdot which have had circumstantial ties to the subject of the entry- usually some company's product. Another linked posting was by a guy who was closely tied to an "online marketing expert." I think there is quite a bit of astroturf in the "web log" arena- much more so than in "mainstream" media, I'd bet.
IMHO, journalists are people who go to school and study it, train under the wing of a mentor, and report to an editor. Bloggers are "some Joe with a webpage."
Re:Blogs Are Here To Stay And The Impact Will ODee (Score:1, Insightful)
There is no revolution here. This is just a new device to make loud narcissists louder and more narcissistic.
You fucking toolbag.
bloggers != real reporters (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:If you define 'Elite' as... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blogs (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who thinks blogs are a resource worth listening to and appealing to beyond any other basic news site clearly doesn't understand blogs. They're not some sort of revolution in ways of reporting news, they're not the newest way to make money. They're simpaly social circles written down, in the past I'd tell friends about new games I was playing, now I just blog about them and they can read it if they wish.
The way most blog systems are set up is very simple and easy. You click a button after you've done typing and it's done. It's like having a geocities site with no limit on bandwidth and no need to waste time designing a layout. Maybe a few more links and a few less images but this isn't anything special, just another resource for the average person to use.
Re:Fine by me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fine by me (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Re:Bloggers the Tech World's New Elite? (Score:2, Insightful)
It makes no references to the article or the issue at hand whatsoever, and requires no thought at all. Thus, this comment I am making must ALSO be "Insightful" (although I would disagree
Re:No. Next question. (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet... these people that nobody else "gives a shit" about are apparently getting front-row treatment. Interesting way to be ignored.
Not that your pithy comment doesn't have some merrit - there's a lot of hubris around blogs that need some reality checks. But let's at least try to do it reasonably. Obviously SOMEONE other than "bloggers" care. But one point is that posting up a blog doesn't buy you in to this newfound interest any more than getting an article published by your local community newspaper and calling yourself a "reporter" gets you national press credentials.
Re:Blogs Are Here To Stay And The Impact Will ODee (Score:1, Insightful)
If you mentally replace the word "Blog" with "Home Page" in any article you read online, it'll seem like you've stepped back in time to the dawn of the Web. That's how people talked about the web a few years ago.
And how do people talk about "home pages" now? They redicule them for wasting bandwidth on worthless content. The few highly popular blogs will stick around, but the rest will be thrown on the ash heap of history, with the rest of the geocities pages.
Re:Please stop using that word (Score:3, Insightful)
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".
Re:Bloggers the Tech World's New Elite? (Score:4, Insightful)
And when I read it the comment for the first time, it struck me as being humourous, because of its quick and simple dismissal of the topic at hand while answering the main question of the article.
Hell, if one assumes what I've just said to be true, then the post is informative for people that don't RTA (not to waste time).
It at the very least shows more independant thought than some