April 1, 2005
merit, we don't need no stinking merit
Suw is talking about Blogospheric Glass Ceilings.
People like Searls, Gillmor and Rosen have whuffie in spades, and this is why they can start snowballs rolling downhill and why those snowballs grow as they go. If you have no whuffie, your snowball will just melt - no whuffie means few readers, no one gaining kudos off developing your idea, no whuffie coming back to you for having had it. The idea goes nowhere.Fair enough (even if I'm not convinced that my "Wuffie" is as high as she claims).It'd be nice to think that it's the quality of the idea that gets the snowball moving, but more often than not, that has nothing to do with it. Hugh Macleod, for example, has so much whuffie that all he has to do is fart and the trackbacks start rolling in.
It's a funny one, this topic. Treating wuffie [the measure of one's influence in an internet-enabled sphere] like hard currency (gold, diamonds, The American Dollar etc) is tempting (because it's easy) but at the end of the day, ill-advised (because you will starve if you do).
But Suw is right. The Blogosphere isn't a meritocracy. Of course it isn't. To paraphrase Seth Godin, nobody's going to read your blog unless there's something in it for them.
"Something in it for them" has always had little to do with merit.
Posted by hugh macleod at April 1, 2005 6:23 AM | TrackBackI don't understand why some people spend so much time worrying over "whuffie" as if there's some finite supply and not enough to go around.
Sometimes you just toil in obscurity and hope enough people notice and ultimately give a damn.
Posted by: scottandrew at April 1, 2005 6:35 PMSocial networks such as open source projects and the blogsphere are guided by trust systems. The trust system in the blogsphere is the same as the one around Hollywood. It's called Celebrity.
Posted by: Brian Massey at April 3, 2005 3:37 AMNice image, it's good to see someone talk about "wuffle" or whatever it may be called. I think services like flickr though are really helping anyone gain some wuffle though, along with things like RSS. They make it so easy to watch what others are doing without having your time that you're able to soak in more information from more people. This allows for more wuffle for more people. I don't know, that's just my thought.
Posted by: Jeramey at April 3, 2005 10:59 PM