Steve Gillmor writes about his experience in dealing with skeptics about blogosphere growth & influence.There’s an insistent voice of the blogosphere beginning to dominate the conversation between vendors and customers. It's more of a zero sum game than many are willing to accept. Analysts are consolidating (read: contracting) and tech news has been commoditized to something approaching loss leader. Cynics see the syndisphere as a social network dominated by gunslingers and marketers-disguised-as-evangelists. Slowly, surely, the blogosphere has emerged as a platform where this kind of whatever-it-is is not just tolerated but vested with authority.
That's why Adam Curry called Robert Scoble the real leader of Microsoft. It takes nothing away from the genius of Bill Gates and the fundamentally honest spirit of Steve Ballmer to understand that Robert represents the WYSIWYG authority of the emergent network. At the EOD - What wins? Attention. Who, what, and how long. It will take on, supplement, and eventually, supplant search. Information will search for you, not the other way around. How many people, once they switched to AOL on Live8 Day, went back? The same number who switched back from RSS. My friend still hasn't fired up Bloglines, or Rojo, or iTunes for that matter. Sketpics will become converts in the near future.
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