The Risk of Discovery

One of the premises of TheGoodBlogs is that of discovery. Exposing the long tail to a wider audience by introducing new blogs and blog entries on your blog page. Of course, that comes with a risk, you may see something you like or you don't. Sounds simple, there is a choice, click or not to click. However, I suspect many bloggers are concerned about who is promoted on their page and less so as to who is promoting them. I imagine that is due to the fact that the blog is a web reflection of your persona. Just like you care about what brand of clothes you wear, you care about what or who your blog is associated with. We care about it too.

If you look at Digg, YouTube, MySpace, a common complaint I've heard is that much of what you see is irrelevant, you spend a lot of time clicking on stuff that you don't care for. Yet it is that total anarchy and openness that has created vast audiences. Pretty much volume over quality. Like democracy, everything is open for abuse. A quick search on the Net will show tips on how to get on Digg's front page or how to achieve better scores in the search engine. I've written else where that the long tail is not one giant blob but rather a large collection of niches. Finding, defining and managing each niche is really the challenge for us today. As I write, the road for TheGoodBlogs is becoming clearer, I think the path is that of distributed self-regulated communities...