What about the Alternative Bands?
I love to read Steve Gillmor's posts - he has a unique way with words and it's fun (OK sometimes frustrating) to decipher his messages. But I really wish he would look beyond his Silicon Valley-tinted glasses and mention/link to some new blood now and then. Take this extract from his latest post, referencing what he calls the "new content kids on the block":
"Yes, it's the Dog Days, where the print books glide toward the soft landing of the new fiscal year while laying off the last remnants of the Golden Age of tech journalism. Replacing the old print bands are the new groups: the Maliks, the PaidContents, the AlwaysOns, the Battelles, and the session players: Beattie, Zawodny, Mernit, Clavier, Obasanjo, Canter, the Monkchips. Greasing the skids are the SuperSessions: Robert Scoble and the Flying Berlind Brothers, Wave Diner and the OPMLs, Jonny Schwartz and the CIOs, and Sergey, Mills, Jobs, and Yang."
The above names are all very worthy ones - and I count some of them as blog buddies (and employers in a couple of cases). But I'd like to add my own 'Alternative bands' to the mix - some Generation X and Y.
A few of my favourite "groups" include (in totally random Bloglines order) Phil Pearson, Charlie Wood, Anastasia Goodstein, Lilia Efimova, Andy Baio, The TechCrunch Crew, Charles Coxhead, Tim Yang, Dina Mehta, Alex Barnett, Josh Porter, Tom Coates, Janet Tokerud, Lucas Gonze... there are MANY more I want to mention (sorry, but this is my lunch hour and I gotta get going!).
My point is: there's a whole world of music, er I mean blogging, talent. Don't forget to give us a shout-out now and then Mr Steve "Casey Kasem" Gillmor. And that goes for the AlwaysOn Top 100, or whatever the name of that Billboard-like chart is.
Rock on everybody! :-) (rant over)
update: I didn't have time to give my picks some rock n' roll nicknames. That would be fun though - how about you suggest some in the comments? And of course please feel free to extend my (short and hurried) list of alt rockers...
update 2: Steve has updated his post, to include "MacManus' Youngbloods" :-) I like the sound of that - maybe we're the new Blogger Brat Pack! Now if I could only get Tony Perkins and Dave Sifry to include some of us Brat Packers in their Open Media 100... ;-)
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You rock Steve!
And I take back the Casey Kasem bit. You're as cool as Adam Curry :-)
Isn't the whole idea that there are no real superstars? What's the point of all these lists? I appreciate what you're trying to get across, Richard, but it all seems like one big pissing contest and wouldn't blogs/Web 2.0 be much better off leaving the pissing contests behind?
Just a thought. (Obviously I mean no offense to you Richard, just the lists kind of bug me -- and not because I'm not on them.)
Who said it was a contest? Listing other good sites doesn't pitch them in contest, it merely offers a few "recommended reads" to people. It can be hard finding GOOD blogs out there.
Best example being some of the more worthy Bloggie winners over the last few years, sites I'd never heard of as I wasn't "in the circle".
How else do we find them?
Ohh and I get the fact that the "A-list" could help by stopping all the self-referencing but it's human nature to stick with what you know!
Good point Gordon, and I agree things awards like the bloggies do help people find new blogs. As do lists of blogs you enjoy. I guess my problem is in labeling the different groups.
I guess my problem lies in the idea that you can leave someone off a list of blogs you enjoy. As soon as that possibility is opened then it becomes more of a contest. I guess my real problem was in Richard suggesting writing, "Don't forget to give us a shout-out now and then." By writing that it moves from a recommendation of alternative sources (completely viable and reasonable) to a belief that those people deserve to be on Gillmor's list. While I happen to enjoy most of the blogs mentioned, Gillmor has a right to any list he chooses. Offering alternatives is far different than suggestion additions. (At least in my mind.)
Also, my first comment may have come off far harsher than it was meant. It was early and I apologize.
the rabid riffer of attention has been good enought to give me the odd shout out, so i say keep it up mr gillmor. your writing is all over the show, but your networking is outstanding and things are getting done
I hear what you're saying Noah... it is indeed a bunch of pissing contests. After I wrote this, I saw all the latest posts about the A List and so forth - oy!
In a way, all I was trying to do here was get Steve's attention and let him know of some other "new content kids on the block". He always links to the same people, so I just wanted to broaden the conversation a bit. Hence the "Don't forget to give us a shout-out now and then" bit from me...
Noah, your comment: "I guess my problem lies in the idea that you can leave someone off a list of blogs you enjoy."
Yes I agree totally, that is something I'm always wary about when I list out blogs I enjoy. There's *always* a bunch of people/blogs I neglect to mention, but are worthy of mention. I imagine this dilemma must be worse for the "a list", because they have so many more people clamouring for a shout-out from them ;-)
This Attention thing is highly contentious at times.
Hey Richard, I appreciate what you were doing and I think it's always valuable to present alternative point of views. I just want people to acknowledge the fact that the only A-list that matters is yours. I've got my A-list and it includes bloggers with thousands of readers and bloggers with two. Blogging to me is about content, not audience and I think the whole ranking thing undermines that and brings us back to a fairly useless place.
agreed. btw, I never said anything about ranking. Indeed if you look at my blog archives you'll find a very relevant post from July 2003:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001688.php
:-)
The A-List, I gather, is a list of bloggers. I've submitted a trackback about We-Rank.com already, but I wanted to mention that a pissing contest is always fun, for one thing, and different people win in successive pissing contests. The point is that it would be more useful if we were directed to high-quality blog-entries rather than to high-quality bloggers. Everyone has bad days - why should we need to read their crap when that happens? We-Rank provides technology that solves this problem.