Thinkcorps

Been perusing posts from Joi Ito’s blog regarding blogs and fairness. All very theoretical and such, (‘cept when Dave Winer comes in and pops the big thought bubble, deflating the intellectual mousse, as it were). Now, I think I’ve got a handle on what they’re talking about, and it is an interesting question, inasmuch as it reveals a community of technology architects wrestling with the implications of what they’ve wrought and how, perhaps to make it better, or at least to maintain itself.

There’s a lot going on in there, much of which I don’t understand and don’t feel like breaking down, but it’s good that they care.

So for my personal mental exercise:

Blogs are both a publishing tool and a content platform (from the consumer side).

As a publishing tool, blogs (especially when extended to include all the future possibilities Joi envisions) lower costs to an extent that you have to expect that a) they’ll beat out many traditional publishers AND micropayment schemes (simply because the micropayment overhead itself is too great, like for-pay WiFi), and it will increase the potential pool of content producers.

As a tool, blogs do not address content quality, creativity, frequency, etc. – that’s left to the creators. This is called fitness, as I understand it, and it can vary across blogs and across time. This instability is much much greater than in traditional publishing, which as a business, is about eliminating much of that instability both for producers and consumers.

Additionally, blogs should be as dumb as possible, just like the Internet. Now, ‘how dumb’ is the big fat question, since determining what it is that blogs should do in its most abstract form is probably a fairly difficult question. Then again, it may be very simple. Probably depends on whether you fall on the publishing or consuming side.

The consumer side of blogs is where the current action seems to be. This looks at how blogs affect the consumption of content – the linking and such. A big part of the argument seems to be that there’s a power law that reinforces the position of popular blogs, as it pertains to linking. I can definitely see this, but as many have already pointed out, blogs are not necessarily designed to aggregate popular links, increasing their own popularity—some are, to be sure, and we’ve already experienced the first wave of blog spam designed specifically to exploit this.

So, I suppose, in light of spam, this ‘fairness’ discussion, might be more aptly termed a ‘fitness’ discussion on how best to architect a blogosphere that can best sustain itself—and it’s best qualities. Of course, no one could ever agree on what the purpose of the blogosphere is (not individual blogs, mind you, but the community as a whole) or what its best qualities are.

Much of these discussions will probably evidence themselves in better search apps and aggregators, both consumptive tools. I think very little has been done yet (though much seems to be in the works) toward empowering readers of blogs to find new authors and threads. The work being done with Web-based aggregators and OPML, etc. seem to point to a bright future for navigating the blogosphere.

Then again, when you think about it, how do you judge a 3rd degree link? Your basic FOAF question. With imperfect information, how do you judge an unknown link outside of the power law? And would ‘power’ even reveal anything in a weak link? The resolution of weak links is by definition weak.

But every link at its genesis is weak, and its only through cross-linking, comments, and trackback that an individual link gets strong. A blog generates strength through each successive strong link. Creating the power law, mentioned previously.

So if every good link generates power, I’m not sure that there’s anywhere very interesting to go with this discussion.

People will gravitate toward ‘influential’ blogs because there’s good, frequent content and good personality (plus, the time saved by relying on an editor to find interesting content). I also really like the fact that there’s personalities behind these sites, people like me. I also think that there’s some topics that will always be more popular: political blogs seem to do great.

Compared to traditional media, there’s so much diversity in the mix of sites, stories, and voices that get heard on these dominant blogs. I like reading the random thoughts of some kid getting ready for their prom or somesuch, but I’m not gonna read it every day. That’s the whole fun of it.

If people keep wanting to write, then I think blogs will do fine.

End of rambling for the day. I’m gonna go buy some DVD-Rs now and do bad bad things.