unmediated

I happened upon a post on Nicholas Carr’s Blog this morning called The Great Unread. Although it’s about written blogs, specifically, I think the gist of it carries over into the videoblogging realm quite nicely.

As the Yahoo Videoblogging Group has grown, there have been repeated complaints about A-list vloggers - vloggers that get the hype, the views, the links, the magazine articles (also known as the usual suspects). This has led to some acrimonious debates over fairness in group dynamics.

Do A-listers exist in the vlogosphere? Is it a clique? An attention grab? Is it a question of who speaks the loudest and most often or is does it have to do with who came into the scene first?

Nic Carr calls the idea of a democratic and egalitarian blogosphere an "innocent fraud":

An innocent fraud is a lie, but it’s a lie that’s more white than black. It’s a lie that makes most everyone happy. It suits the purposes of the powerful because it masks the full extent of their power, and it suits the purposes of the powerless because it masks the full extent of their powerlessness.

elves about the blogosphere - that it’s open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.

The post goes on to explain why he feels that is,

and ends with an tale of A-listers merging with big media moguls while "blog peasants" look on.

There are a great many comments following the post, some in agreement and some railing against it’s perceived hyperboly. The gem that I found within it, however, is a link to an article written in 2003, considered an important document on the matter.

Clay Shirky’s Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality attempts to offer an objective view of a growing gap between popular blogs and what Nic refers to as The Great Unread.

In 2003, the most popular blog was Instapundit, blogging was still fairly young but growing quickly…much as videoblogging is today. I think some of the parallels are striking and would help to explain the growing disparity.

Rather than using a loaded term such as Innocent Fraud, Shirky refers to something called Power Law Distribution and how small historical moments are writ large over time as more and more people enter the arena.

A few people begin vlogging. They link to each other. Soon, others arrive on the scene and create their own vlogs. Their links reflect the vlogrolls of their predecessors with a few additions. As each new vlogger arrives, their vlogrolls are more inclined to include vlogs that have been linked to by the majority of the participants and less inclined to include the vlogs that are only linked to by a few. Oddly enough, the greater the number of options, rather than flattening the plane of attention, the results become more skewed toward the favorited vlogs.

In the section, Freedom of Choice Makes Stars Inevitable, Shirky writes:

Note that this model is absolutely mute as to why one blog might be preferred over another. Perhaps some writing is simply better than average (a preference for quality), perhaps people want the recommendations of others (a preference for marketing), perhaps there is value in reading the same blogs as your friends (a preference for "solidarity goods", things best enjoyed by a group). It could be all three, or some other effect entirely, and it could be different for different readers and different writers. What matters is that any tendency towards agreement in diverse and free systems, however small and for whatever reason, can create power law distributions.

o the question of "is it fair", Shirky offers four points:

1. there is no threshold for having a weblog
2. good blogs stay on top because they continue blogging (a difficult accomplishment in and of itself! It’s hard work!)
3. This one is important, in my opinion so I’ll quote directly:

the stars exist not because of some cliquish preference for one another, but because of the preference of hundreds of others pointing to them. Their popularity is a result of the kind of distributed approval it would be hard to fake.

o A-list because "the lines separating more or less trafficked blogs is arbitrary"

Once a blog (or vlog) becomes popular, will the content creator become part of an elite clique that predominantly links to and associates with other popular creators or is it a question of numbers?

…as a blogger’s audience grows large, more people read her work than she can possibly read, she can’t link to everyone who wants her attention, and she can’t answer all her incoming mail or follow up to the comments on her site.

uts loudest, works hardest, socializes online more, or is it a question of who you know (as some have suggested through Nic’s comments)?

Video’s visual component also might ask the question, is it who is the most attractive or the most engaging/entertaining on camera?

I don’t think there are any direct answers to these questions.

Shirky asks and answers a couple of questions of his own that are worth considering:

Are there people who are as talented or deserving as the current stars, but who are not getting anything like the traffic? Doubtless. Will this problem get worse in the future? Yes.

that occurs organically a problem or not? Do you consider yourself an A-lister? Why or why not?

- Anne