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Downside of the A-list phenomenon: link baiting is easy

This weekend, it was Paul Graham’s turn to resort to linkbaiting.

He writes that Microsoft is dead. Reasons: techies don’t use MS as much as before, Google is winning the online battle, and so on.

That is okay for Paul to write, as he writes for a particular type of audience – geeky, startup-oriented, who love to give the finger to the goliaths of the day.

Don Dodge quickly puts things in perspective when he asks, ‘Since when does growing $4 Billion a year = Dead?’.

Already many including those working with Microsoft understand Microsoft is a middle-aged, gracefully plateauing company that was once king.

What goes around comes around. Dave Winer puts it right when he says ‘What's happening with MS is not death, but being pulled back to earth by gravity. It's the cycle of tech companies’

Microsoft will not be worried by Paul Graham’s article.

Microsoft is in all probability aiming for that fickle, ‘oh so cocky’ market’. It is after the low-bro market – the governments, the Fortune 500/1000/whatever organizations who still think the CIO is God and the harassed consumer who easily succumbs to the retailer’s pressure to go in for a fully loaded PC – easy money for the taking.

Therefore, here is a thought:
The downside of the A-list economy, perpetuated by the likes of Techmeme, Digg and others, is that people on the list have the liberty to make cute headlines without lifting the little finger.

As an A-list, you are allowed to be confrontational (Calacanis’ anti-SEO rant), pouting (Scoble’s choice not blog after the Kathy Sierra incident), falsely sentimental (Om Malik’s Web 2.0 innocence post)….at the other end is Time magazine which proclaim 2006 to be the year of YOU.

Labels: blogging, Microsoft

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:39 PM