Three Links and a Thought
I’m in the midst of writing up a response to the complex pile of comments which landed on the Remotely article, but in the meantime, here’s some recent landings on my feed list. Starting with oldest first:
Tech.Memeorandum appears to comb all tech news and weblog sources and then does some “magic” to assess popularity. I haven’t done any research, but I’m guessing it heavily weights cross-linking as well as comment activity on other sites. That’s irrelevant… what’s cool is that it does capture hot pipin’ relevant bits. If you’re a nerd like me, you want as few stops as possible to capture buzz and Memeorandum does it.
Memorandum suffers from the wall-of-text problems that still make del.icio.us intimidating and a tricky browsing experience, but if you’re simply reaping data from an aggregator, who cares?
TechCrunch’s stated goal is “Tracking Web 2.0” which means I should starting foaming at the mouth regarding Web 2.0 (again). Problem is, Michael Arrington, the site’s writer, is doing a good job of sifting through the noise to find Web 2.0 bits that deserve a second click. I base this entirely on my completely unscientific method of noticing when I leave Bloglines to read a story at the actual site.
ValleyWag. There has been a well defined need for a good valley gossip rag since Infoworld nuked the original Cringely back forever ago. Still, the idea that I care about who the Google founders are nailing is absurd, so, clearly, they’ve got a hit on their hands.
My hope is that the Wag takes a stab on software gossip, as well, because I’ve got serious concerns about the quantity of juicy nerd_celebrity gossip that’s out there.
The thought is a simple one. A majority of the sites sitting in Bloglines represent the voice of a single person. I am wondering out loud why that is the case. Is there any way to articulate what is lost when a site aggregates multiple voices into one other than, “It doesn’t sound real”?
Thanks for the links.
With respect to your thought -- what a site loses when there are two people is its sense of identity and its will to live. Writing is (at least for me) an intensely personal experience even when it's not a deeply personal subject. These are my thoughts, not anyone else's. When there are two people there, either one has to be subordinate to the other -- in the sense that editorial control rests with only one person -- or you'll get into fights about style that'll sap your will to write.
Additionally, it's more than twice as complex to maintain a two-person activity than it is a one-person activity. (and 3 people is even *more* complex, because you get into the second- and third-order interactions.)
When I first discoverd bloglines, I subbed to both slashdot and the register, and after about 2 weeks and 1976 unread items, I unsubbed and went back to browsing the sites directly every few days.
I think the salient features of these sites is:
1) you don't need to have new posts pushed to you cos you know there'll be a whole heap every day.
2) you probably will only want to read only 10% of the stuff that is posted.
3) Even the 10% you do read, you will only read when there's nothing better elsewhere.
In other words, sites with multiple voices tend to have higher quantity and lower quality.
The counter example would be the sorely missed suck.com.
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