Back from BloggerCon 2

Still processing a lot of the discussion. There were a lot of interesting comments from people that are far smarter than me. Got to meet a number of interesting bloggers and get involved in some fascinating discussions. However, I have to think a lot about what was said: was it all rehash of what’s been said in the past or was there anything new that came out of it? I’m still not sure but I know that I had a great time either way. Thanks to all the people I’ve met and chatted with.

I’m still not convinced that blogs are that different from the web revolution that started in the early 90s. The discussion at BloggerCon was centering around a number of subjects that were discussed at the beginning of the commercialization of the Internet: how do we keep this honest? how do we make money at this? how do we get traditional institutions to recognize this as legitimate? To me, the only things blog add, compared to the rest of the web, is an ability to publish without knowing HTML.

Update:

Seth Finkelstein has posted an interesting entry highlighting how clubby the A-list is. It’s an interesting thought in terms of the power laws and something that was not touched on during the discussion of Shirky’s power laws. The antidote to this, of course, is to cut the A-list out. Many A-listers mention that they link to A-listers because the other guys link to them. What would happen if non-A-listers started to link to sources other than the A-list? Would more fluidity be created as part of the process?