The Web popularity contest

Larry Borsato — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:01:57 -0800

Just like in high school, it seems that we are all still dying to know what the cool kids are talking about. The Web has become a massive popularity contest.

Meme trackers like Techmeme and blog ranking services like AideRSS measure what everyone is talking about. Social bookmarking sites like digg and reddit allow for users to submit the content they like the most, though in the end they still highlight the pages and sites that larger numbers of registered members like.

But this focus on popularity comes at the expense of diversity. While the Web was once thought of as a conversation, it is increasingly becoming an echo chamber. To use a newspaper metaphor, it's as if the entire Web is being reduced to just the front page and related opinions and comments.

While these tools do make a universe of information more easily digestible, it ignores something traditional media outlets understand very well: There is always room for human interest writing and filler, like horoscopes.

Veteran newscaster Walter Cronkite once told me that he read several newspapers every day in their entirety to learn things he didn't know, but he wanted to know. Reading only the most popular stories -- basically those appearing on the front page of each section -- would reduce the chances of finding those extra nuggets of information.

In the online world, many people follow hundreds of media sites, blogs, and other online sources looking for those precious nuggets. They realize that learning and innovation come from a plethora of different thoughts and viewpoints. Those thoughts often come from obscure authors operating far outside the popular sphere. Sites like StumbleUpon let users find random sites that others have identified, allowing for a little bit of serendipity to enter their online lives, every day.

Had I limited my reading to only the popular I would never have found Andrea Learned, who writes about marketing to women, or Wizbang, a Massachusetts-based blog that often discusses politics. Both contain excellent content that I seldom miss; both were found by happy accident. And I'm always on the lookout for sites more like these to broaden my horizons.

I still read the newspaper because I appreciate the thought of a human editor putting together a diverse collection of mainstream and obscure stories for me to read. In my opinion, this is the reason that newspapers will continue to exist. Can a computer ever automatically perform the same task? I'm not sure, but I will always enjoy both the popular and the fringe stories whether they are in print or online. There's a whole collection of smart people out there with great ideas who won't ever win the Web popularity contest, but it's well worth the time to stop and read what they have to say on the back pages of the Web.

Related news, commentary, and predictions:

Prediction: Digg will find a buyer by June 2008
Analysis: Techmeme: A Cautionary Tale
News: Digg joins Microsoft, Facebook in data portability group
News: Top Digg users revolt against algorithm change on site
News: Lookery, the company serving ads to Facebook and other social networks, raises $900,000
News: Online brokerage rewards most useful social network posts

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The Web popularity contest