February 19th, 2006
Bloggers Drink the PR Koolaid
I’ve seen many bloggers criticize Old Media for reprinting press releases and otherwise uncritically passing along corporate propaganda. But the TechCrunch PR feeding frenzy on tech.memeorandum today was truly a sight to behold. (My goodness, Gabe, is Memeorandum a meme-tracker or a PR tracker?) The title of Dan Farber’s post, TechCrunch leads Silicon Valley Web renaissance, is emblematic of all the Koolaid that’s been served and eagerly drunk.
It was a party. Everybody had fun. I wish I could have been there.
And yes there have been some half-sober assessments of Bubble 2.0, with apologists arguing that it’s more benign than the last bubble.
What bugs me about this is how hypocritically it jives with the holier-than-Old-Media attitude of some (just some) of the players in blogging and Web 2.0.
Blogging may be empowering, but let’s face it — bloggers are people, just like the people who write for Old Media companies, and they suffer from all the same foibles and temptations.
Let’s not confuse advances in technology with advances in human nature.
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Tell me again how “So what does matter?  talent, insight, and, most of all, ideas.” :-(.
I know, I know, there’s always a reply that if you wish really, really hard, it’ll come true (and if it didn’t come true, it must be all your fault for not wishing hard enough). However, from the perspective of seeing these Kool Kids parties, it sure seems like connections, insiderness, who-you-know, matters a lot more than is comfortable for the evangelism.
[…] They do have one thing in common though - apart from being about Mike. And that is, they are almost all raves. The posts about the party are raves (even, surprisingly, some from people who couldn’t make it), and the ones about Edgeio.com are almost all raves as well, although to be fair there are a few questions thrown in here and there. But Dan Farber’s post, as my old sparring partner Scott Karp notes, sums up the tone of breathless enthusiasm: it is entitled “TechCrunch leads Silicon Valley Web renaissance.” […]
life. Here are some anti-crap articles and rants that also make me feel a little better about life, in no order: Web 2.0: The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It’s worse than you think.Announcing Web 2.0.1 Bloggers Drink the PR Koolaid
Seth, you may not be at the top of tech.memeorandum everyday, but I have seen you quoted ALL OVER the place — I saw your post wishing your numbers were higher — don’t we all.
You have ideas, and people are recognizing you for it. Maybe not at the rate you wish, but really, think about it — in pre-blogging days, would you and I even be having this conversation?
The TechCrunch folks are making a lot more noise than you are, but you ARE being heard.
Recently I’ve benefitted from, well, I can’t call it a “wave”, more like a little splash, of backlash against blog hype. But I regard this as some of the most trivial things I say, though I recognize it channels some widespread frustration with the cliquishness.
However, the deep point is that just like the exponential nature of attention rebuts meritocracy (unless merit just happens to follow that distribution), the huge coverage of a party which has as its only distinguishing characteristic that a bunch of A-lister’s groomed the lice out of each other’s fur, shows that social factors can be enormously relevant in terms of what gets heard.
I mean, in most situations, there’s a mixture of social and merit factors. So someone can always say that what succeeds is due to merit and not social factors, while what has failed on the social factors can be dismissed as not having merit. But that just doesn’t fly with group hugs. That’s why it’s notable.
And the issue is not whether we’d be having this conversation. It is whether this conversation is better or worse than some other conversation we might be having in a non-blogging world (benefit vs. opportunity cost). Strictly as an objective matter, the answer is by no means obvious.
Just One Story Registration Scheme Foiled (Inadvertently) Edgeio and the distributed world The Death of TV Advertising Yahoo News’ plans Bloggers Drink the PR Koolaid California Pol’s Amazing Stock Picks Blogs Will NOT Save Old Media Wireless phone sex Blorgon The Times discovers sex
[…] » Mathew Ingram: "the fact that the same people who write blogs about cool startups are often people who are involved in other startups, which are then blogged by others, and so on … Although their positions have shifted around during the day, they are all about Mike Arrington - but from two different vantage points. Some are about his great party (which was held for Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book Naked Conversations) and others are about Edgeio.com, his startup … hey are almost all raves. The posts about the party are raves (even, surprisingly, some from people who couldn’t make it), and the ones about Edgeio.com are almost all raves as well, although to be fair there are a few questions … But Dan Farber’s post, as my old sparring partner Scott Karp notes, sums up the tone of breathless enthusiasm … The point is that at the moment the lines can get pretty blurry in the old blogosphere, especially for those in Silly-con Valley - and no, I don’t feel that way just because I don’t get invited to Mike’s parties (and am too far away to go anyway). I think it’s a lingering problem people will have to confront in one way or another if Web 2.0 is going to get ahead in the credibility game. […]
Something is wrong here. Technorati is telling people that I posted stories which I did not write. Now… this sends a bit more traffic my way, but I don’t know if it is for the better. For instance, if you readthis post on Publishing 2.0
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