Interesting article on yesterday’s NYT magazine on blogging and its impact on the American political landscape (I am not finished reading it)
Billmon (who used to run a prominent lefty weblog) has a critical piece on the mainstreamization of blogs in LA Times. I am not very sympathetic to his viewpoint on this subject and this post responds to some of the charges.
I think the idea that the prominest blogs stop being subversive and/or suck the Oxygen out of blogosphere is old, justified and in the nature of things. Way back, before the left oriented blogs like DailyKos or Whiskey bar were as prominest as they now are in North America, before the conservative warbloggers like Instapundit became so popular, bloggers in North America used to handwring over the prominence of what went under the name of “A list bloggers”.
Clay Shirky wrote an interesting article on power law distribution last year. What he wrote and what I said in my commentary then, is still valid.
However, there are some caveats. I think single topic weblogs are still a powerful idea. Internet (thank you google!) makes it much easier to find sites catering to your interests. If you are not trying to tackle something as broad as North American politics, there is still enough space for interesting niche weblogs.
If you do want to tackle a broad enough subject, the only way to do it now in a way that attracts a large readership is to provide a diversity of original voices
In fact, as Billmon’s own experience showed, it should be the preferred option if the motivation is fame or influence.