I see it happen every day. There’s a cast of characters out there – Leo Laporte, Chris Pirillo, Jason Calacanis, John Dvorak, Robert Scoble (whom I absolutely DESPISE because of that “I’m the man!” snapshot on his blog… makes me want to beat him with his fucking tripod)… a whole elite clique of cynical blog/journalists who bring up topics and lead folks around them.
The listeners (and I admit, I’m one of them) follow them from point A to point B every morning, midday and afternoon. It can be a link they found, a story they found, what have you. Now take these salt shakers and add the wire press (Reuters, Associated Press, etc.) and you have the flock.
I started thinking about this tonight while listening to John Dvorak’s Tech5 podcast. One regular complaint of Mr. Dvorak is the redundancy in the news business today. One story gets picked up by a wire service and it explodes all over the net with thousands of redundant postings. Add the Cynic Clique into the mix and then you’ve grabbed their listeners to comment on the stories at whatever social network has the spotlight today.
Web 2.0 and social networking is likely to fail. There is an enormous amount of time and originality being wasted here on a daily basis. I’m starting to wonder when people move on.
I guess it should start with myself.