Mod. 4.2 - A New Media Audience

Readings:
Shirky:Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality

Comments:
This reading is from a mailing list back in 2003. It is important to take into account that this is seven years ago. As a result, the statement
'A persistent theme among people writing about the social aspects of weblogging is to note (and usually lament) the rise of an A-list, a small set of webloggers who account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world.'
is certainly outdated. My experience tells me that there are bloggers all over the world who contribute to all sorts of different aspects in today's society, among them a large number of journalists as well as people genuinly interested in certain subjects and contributing regularely to a world wide discussion.

'The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.'


This is a more general view that I can claerly agree to.

In terms of the power law distribution dogma, as I would like to call it, the more important question to me is, what I would like to achieve with my blog. Do I want to be famous (as many readers as possible) or do I want to contribute my time and effort to a subject that I regard as important (share with people interested ina specific subject)? If the latter is the case, then popularity doesn't have any meaning to me.

From what I understand, the top ranks are about popularity. The higher the numbers the more generic the content as it compliments mass appeal.

' It's not impossible to launch a good new blog and become widely read, but it's harder than it was last year, and it will be harder still next year.' 

Again, this in my view is not the most important aspact of writing a blog. If you want to share information ranking is not important. Accuracy comes before popularity.