Looking up (and down) at the blogosphere’s ivory tower
I spend a lot of time reading blogs. Part of the fun of that is sharing what I’ve learned and what I think via Google Reader shared items, FriendFeed, Twitter, and of course here at the old Online Media Cultist stomping grounds.
Living in Los Angeles and working as a web producer for 3jane IndieClick, I feel like I’m in a pretty interesting and lucky position. I help to manage the production of cutting edge websites and tech products. So I like to think that my experiences as a web producer and my blog consumption and general web cultery gives me a unique perspective on things.
And so I’m a little bit outside “the beltway” of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, though I lived there circa 1998-2003. In addition I don’t have the time/resources to get to many tech events and conferences and such (and I feel like my days are packed wall-to-wall anyway!). So while some of the upper tier bloggers in the tech/web space may have a vague-ish idea of who I am, I have no illusions that conference cocktail parties are replete with lengthy and fascinating discussions of the latest OMC installment.
This is all prelude to saying that something I read this evening by a Mr. Robert Scoble pissed me off a little bit. Scoble is of course one of the better known tech bloggers out there. Here’s the thing: I know that Scoble didn’t mean anything by what pissed me off. But I tend to think it’s a little bit telling nonetheless.
In the midst of a very lengthy discussion of the supposed concern over the future of PR (my take: as long as there’s something to promote and people around who want to self-promote by means of promoting, the PR industry’s going to be just fine, kids), Scoble issues the following declaration:
…it’s hard to remember the last industry event where Brian [Solis] wasn’t holding court and if you’re a tech blogger and you haven’t yet met Brian you probably haven’t been blogging for more than a week or two…
My first reaction, uttered out loud: really dude?
Now, technically I’m not really a tech blogger; I’m more in the webby/Internet space. But it’s really interesting to see that from Scoble’s perspective, if you’re not attending insider-y tech events, you don’t really “count” in the blogospheric sense. And I have no doubt that Solis is a fascinating fellow to be around, but doesn’t it seem a little old-boy’s-club-ish to declare that to not have been well met with the gent implies a lack of credibility in writing about tech and the web?
Perhaps I’m taking this seemingly offhanded statement too far, but it does give an anecdotal sense of how the much debated “A List” bloggers think of themselves and the wider blogospheric and Internet proletariat/masses/rabble.
Or maybe I’m just being sensitive?
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