There is no A-list.

» 12 Feb 2006

Doc Searls and Seth Finkelstein have been discussing the hierarchy in the blogosphere. Doc Searls is claiming that, ”the Internet blew away the porches of membership. You don't need to bark at a door you can just as easily walk around." He’s claiming that there are no gatekeepers regulating the popularity of blogs.

Seth contends that when an A-lister slags a Z-lister, the Z-lister has no effective means of response.

I contend that there is no A-list or Z-list. I have Seth’s blog and Doc Searl’s blog in my RSS reader (Sage, an extension to Firefox). Until a recent post from Seth, I couldn’t have told you who had more readers. I read about 30 blogs on a regular basis, and only 4 or 5 are in the Technorati Top 100. As far as I’m concerned, Seth and I are sitting at the top of the Pingswepterati. Seth Finkelstein, you are on my A-list.

Contrast this with the situation 10 years ago: me versus the Boston Globe. I had an English teacher in high school who was arrested for some depravity involving kids. The Boston Globe ran an article that printed the lurid details of the accusations against him, before any trial had occurred. They failed to mention that he was a monolith of English teaching for 20 years at my high school.

I wrote a letter to the Globe saying something along the lines of, “If he’s a child molester, he should go to jail, but so far these are just accusations. He was a great teacher; don’t ignore his brilliant history just to sell papers.” They didn’t print the letter, and I felt like I had no recourse. (Incidentally, he did go to jail, and he was still one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.) In this case, I was such a Z-lister that literally nobody heard my complaint. I couldn’t even find out if the Globe received my letter, never mind printing it.

Compare that to Stephen Kurkjian’s recent smear campaign against former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn. I’m as much of a Z-lister as you can get (Technorati rank: 843,855 and rising, baby!), but if you Google his name, the third result is my response to his shameful article about Peter Quinn. It’s tailed off a bit now, but for a while, a large fraction of the traffic to my site was from that link.

I think that’s a great change. Sure, we still have the echo effects of top 100 lists reinforcing the popularity of the top 100, but that doesn’t make the top 100 gatekeepers. It sounds trite, but blogs have actually given a soapbox to the unwashed millions with internet access. It could be better, but it’s still only 2006. (Hey, I even have a hotline to the NSA installed in my house, thanks to Mr. Bush and his illiterate assistant, Michael Hayden!)

I’d love to hear a suggestion of how we could spread people’s attention away from the “A-listers,” but so far, I don’t find my attention too strongly drawn to them.