I've been chewing since reading Clay Shirky's Power Law piece and Dan Gillmor's little writeup on Nick Denton's Pro blogs. Still didn't have any strong opinions, other than amazement on how hot tempers ran.
Finally, I ran across Jeff Jarvis's article Breaking the power law, which is the first thing I have read on the topic that really resonates. He says "Weblogs are the ultimate niche media."
One of the rules of marketing that I learned early in my career: segment the market until you get it small enough so that you can be the leader of it. The same applies to blogging. If being popular is what you care about, specialize in something, says Jarvis. Become the online expert at something. This makes a lot of sense to me.
The example is that came to my mind is Glenn Fleishman. Glenn is an extremely nice guy, who has lots of interesting thoughts about all kinds of things, and has general interest blog, Glenn Logs . He also makes a living as one of many Macintosh experts, writing articles on the Mac for general interest publications. But Glenn's current claim to fame (and online popularity) is that his WI-Fi news site has become the place people go to for news on what is happening with wireless networking. Early on, he took the time to wade through the arcane 802.11x specs and learn what all the issues were, and he put effort into explaining them to less informed people. WiFi news is now the clearing house for information on WiFi, and he is now a (the?) central node in wireless networking. I was at a conference he was at a while ago, and it was amazing to see the deference that the execs from the wireless companies paid to him. I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that WiFi news gets 10x or 100x the views that Glennlog does.
I also liked Jeff Jarvis's reply to Anil Dash wondering why he writes a little general interest weblog: "if I wanted to have a bigger weblog I would follow the law of the niche -- or the law of nano -- and I would not write about whatever I fancy but would, instead, pick one topic and cover it with laser intensity. I would be bigger but I'd be bored."
I feel the same way.
Posted by Geodog at February 16, 2003 01:40 AM | TrackBackMy apologies, but my web hoster has turned off commenting, due to a flood of obscene spam bringing the server to its knees. I hope to have this weblog transitioned over to Wordpress in the near future, so that I can have commenting up and working again. Until then, please feel free to send me your comments via my email contact form.. Please ignore everything below this comment.
The only hole I'd poke in your niche blog argument is that some of the
deference I was getting from Wi-Fi folks was due to the New York Times angle
and the Google angle. The Circuits and business writing I do gives me
general credibility, even though I only file articles every 2 to 8 weeks for
them. The Google angle is that as the #1 match for 802.11b (and in the top 3
or 4 for 802.11, 802.11a, and 802.11g) people find me and assume I'm somehow
important. Combine that with the fact that I'm finding that everyone I meet
in the industry reads my blog all the time and, well, that's what gives me
the oomphf. I know there's some circular reasoning in that paragraph.
The most interesting feedback I've had is when I've been in briefings
recently with Apple and others by phone or in person and they say, "As you
know, Glenn, because you wrote about X on your blog," or "That question you
asked on your blog last night -- we have an answer for that."
It's amazing for me as a freelancer to be able to have this kind of pure
access and involvement, and it makes it possible for me to cover the
industry without the resources of a publication behind me, or a specific
salary paying me to cover it.
As to the blog and power law discussion, I would agree that your argument is a little bit circular, at least as it relates to Google. People in the industry may show you deference and pay lots of attention to you because of your Google rank, but you got your Google rank by being the authoritative source on the web, especially for non-industry people, for 802.11. In other words for finding the 802.11 niche and filling it (very well). And of course, once started, the positive feedback loop sets in, and you become even more influential as even more people see you as "Mr. 802.11."
I hope that it is still fun being "Mr. 802.11". I first ran into you as "Mr. Books" with your ISBN.nu site a few years ago, then ran across 802.11 News 2 years ago when setting up my wireless network. There isn't an obvious connection between the two, so I'd be curious to know how you got started on 801.11. Have you written up anywhere on your sites how you got started?