Why the mystery behind geeks is gone (and why SXSW-like conferences are nonsense)
After having borrowed some good news practices from mainstream media, professional bloggers have said 'enough' and have now returned to the old heavy-duty navel gazing again. They know they can't make money by writing about the problems with this world.
The world faces an economic slowdown - stock markets are tanking, joblessness looms, enough has been said about the home loan debacle and even the sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet has said that these are troubling times.
This doesn't trouble the Silicon Valley (one of the twin Capitals of the Blogosphere), which is obsessed about silly conferences where some of their own are worshipped like Gods and if a reporter tries to ask probing questions, the audience gets tough with her.
In this post-industrial, pre-nuclear, knowledge world, we are creating more Gods than ever before. Conferences like SXSW are temples where geeky pastors preach to the converted and then the converted fan out the message through their blogs and Twitter accounts, singing paens in praise of this person or other.
Some blame it on Google. An entire industry of blogs has formed up around covering these geeks and their love life. They are also saying that the Valley Entrepreneur geeks of today are
more obsessed with becoming famous that they are falling extremely short of bringing 'revolutionary' changes in the marketplace with their startups.
'Revolution', 'Different' - these were the calling cards for geeks. But, geeks are no more the 'cool' people they used to be before. The mystery is gone. Besides all those silly Facebook profiles, movies from Judd Apatow have also the done the damage.
No longer the lonely kid coding away (or, playing with Light Sabres) in mama's basement, now we know that geeks are normal people just like us - with maybe stranger fetishes. Now we know that the geeks have only read more computer programming and designing books than the rest of us.
Where is the mystery? The average geek (or nerd, of you will) is just as mad for money, girls and recognition as the rest of us. Only the order of these three crucial things may vary.
Result: Kevin Rose of Digg is content letting Digg be a mere niche news player, allowing the cabals a free run on the site. I rarely use Digg anymore. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook boldly shirks away from hard questions from users and reporters, comforted by the cushion of a vociferous bunch of bloggers, API developers, consultants, all of whom have a stake in the growing hype around Facebook.
In the valley itself, there is a gulf. A cousin of mine, who lives in San Francisco, says he has never heard about these bloggers and New Media moguls that I say live and work in his city. When I probe more, he enquires about any web 2.0 startup for helping people who have taken home loans beyond their means, for whom foreclosure is a sure thing.
It used to be that earlier, the news media - TV and the big papers were the ones who held big functions awarding anyone they were pleased with (and who pleased them in return).
In this age of blogging, a new generation of incestuous, self-congratulatory range of events has sprung up, churning up large amounts of link love, which I think is the only reason for these events' success.
Labels: Digg, facebook, SXSW, valleywag, web 2.0
How (not) to create a new media empire
Having religiously covered the
three Gs of blogging topics so far
- namely, Gossip, Gadgets and Girls, Nick Denton, the owner of Gawker media group knows what sells in the news business. His approach to
New Media Empire building is bearing good, hold on, stupendous results.
Nick has just posted a
chart showing how Gawker is the fourth largest online media empire.
But, is Nick Denton's way the only way? According to the chart, Gawker is behind the New York Times, USA Today and Washington Post, ahead of Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.
We keep reading about the trouble the newspapers are in - the layoffs are an obvious point of coverage. But, we should not forget the amount of money these news brands have invested in the best reporting talent, especially in the service reporting field - going out there and reporting the best the reader is concerned about.
It takes real money to go out in the field, say Iraq and bring out the stories.
Is Gawker Media taking the armchair route to media empire success?This is the question for the media experts to answer.
Supporters (there are many) of Nick's scrappy approach to New Media empire building will say that the New York Times 'subsidizes' its serious reportage with earnings from its Food and Lifestyle coverage and from About.com.
By that token, shall we expect Nick Denton to fund a serious journalism kind of initiative? I won't bet my meagre collection of Sachin Tendulkar posters on that happening.
Related story:
In the valley of smut: the new Valleywag storyLabels: Blog networks, blogging, gawker, new media, news 2.0, nick denton, valleywag
In the valley of smut: the new Valleywag story
I feel disappointed by the smutty direction lately taken up by Valleywag. From the time when Nick Douglas started as the first writer for Valleywag (he has left for Gawker), I admired Valleywag's gumption when it provided the anti-dote to the
Web 2.0 pied pipers, my name for the likes of Techcrunch and its copycats.
I still remember when Valleywag punched holes in the Second Life story when everyone else considered it be the next Microsoft, sort of.
Now that Uncov.com is no more, we needed Valleywag more than ever to poke more holes in startups' strategies, pick out research analysts posing as Einsteins, and find the real story behind all that navel gazing nonsense that passes as normal in the Valley.
Till date, none of the big web 2.0 blogs has managed to completely upgrade to service reporting. Techcrunch will report any startup news it can get its hands on. ReadWriteWeb will continue its high-theme, analytical approach. Mashable is building upon its lists and Gigaom is somewhere in the middle but no web 2.0 blog has managed to do it all.
We needed Valleywag to present the other side of bland storytelling on all those web 2.0 blogs. Techcrunch, the erstwhile
'pied piper', has managed to do some
'serious' reporting of late.
Things have changed at Valleywag. I think the writers over there are not being able to cope up with blog moghul Nick Denton's
“Traffic-at-all-cost” dictat.
Result: smut is all around.
Geeks and their love life - that is all the rage.
To analyze Valleywag's current editorial direction, I put Monday's Valleywag page through a
Tag Cloud generator. A brief look at most popular terms:
porn 5 (mentions)
meghan asha 5
meghan 9
Julia allison 9
sex 3
geek love 3
gay porn 2
girlfriend 3
sucks 3
jimmy wales 11
The only useful entry that came nearest:
google health 4
I should not be disappointed. It was Valleywag's destiny.
After all, it is supposed to be the Silicon Valley's favorite gossip rag.
Being the Valley's beacon for truth was never the agenda, huh?
http://valleywag.com/
Labels: Blog networks, blogging, tag cloud, techcrunch, trends, valleywag
