A late night rant about blogs overamplification and egocentrism

Published on May 10th, 2005 by Jeff Clavier Blogs & Blogging

A couple of things have happened over the week-end that got me quite disturbed about tendencies I feel are developing, reading through my 200 something feeds: too much over-amplification and egocentrism. I had already blogged about a feeling that bloggers simply pointing to others’ stories were often not properly fact checking.

First there was the "HP incident". To summarize: HP starts a few corporate blogs, one blogger (Thomas Hawk) leaves a negative comment on one post (from HP’s David Gee), the comment gets removed and the blogger’s access is busted, HP realizes they screwed up, reinstated everything, and published an open apology. I should also disclose that I have known David for 6 or 7 years – through his time at IBM, Sun, Yahoo and now HP, and that it is not his style to avoid negative comments and refuse discussions.
And by the way, contrary to the commonly reported story, David did not remove the comment, it was pulled by someone else at HP, as David was traveling, and he got it put back (as he explains in this /. comment).

So was HP wrong in removing this negative comment ? Yes. Were they right in quickly putting it back in and apologizing ? Yes. Was that an early corporate blogging mistake ("erreur de jeunesse" as we say) ? Sure. Has it created a storm in a cup of tea ? YES, OR AT LEAST IT REALLY FELT LIKE IT.

Do we need to go through all this reporting, linking and amplifying of something that was fixed very quickly, right after the issue was uncovered and amounted to a non-evil minor corporate screw-up. No. Because too much amplification leads to noise. Noise leads to irrelevance. The problem is that controversy and superlatives lead to traffic, the online metric measuring fame.

Nick (Denton) said it best in his NY Times "big wet kiss" interview: "A blog [...] is much better at tearing things down – people, careers, brands – than it is at building them up".

Update: Make sure to read Thomas’ comment below. And David has just posted his (after-)thoughts on the whole experience. Worth a read as well.

Second there was this whole business of the AlwaysOn Open KissMyButtIllKissYours 100. For f..k sake, we are just out of the Webby Awards. Why on Earth do we need yet another list that will end up with more or less the same nominations ? The winners and nominees did not get enough link love and PubSub coverage ?

I agree with Peter Caputa who suggests that we ought to surface "New Voices" as opposed to the usual A-listers, and Mary who expresses a lot of my own reservations:

1. Aren’t things in online media just a little young for awards at this
point? I mean, only one or two of the companies associated with the
people below have revenue of any consequence, much less are profitable
and the internet is changing so fast in such a short time, what is the
value of spending time on these awards?
2. I think of awards as something people who’ve spent maybe twenty
years doing something and they are about to retire get. As it is, this
crowd is constantly invited to talk and show leadership and authority
in demonstrable ways. So do we really need to give out awards at this
point?
3. On the other-hand, much of what has been in development for a long
time isn’t necessarily where the coolest and most innovative work is
going on.. so my list is not a reflection of what I think really
matters right now or who’s most innovative at the moment, with the
exception of one or two.
4. Most importantly, isn’t this just a popularity contest for the
nominees, categories and contest makers? We’re likely to nominate who
comes to mind, which are the people we see (online or in person) most
often right at this moment in time.

So Dave Sifry: Dude, can I suggest a change in rule ? Focus on New Voices, New Vendors, New Enablers,… (you get the theme). And purge from the list all – wait I mean ALL – A-listers, webby awards winners, and speakers having appeared in more than 2 major conferences since Web 2.0 last Nov., including AlwaysOn ’05! Having flushed a large majority of current nominees, we might end up with a genuinely different list of people, groups and organizations. And sorry to all my friends who just got flushed.

AOTechnorati100, OpenMedia, OpenMedia100

</rant>

http://www.geoffjones.com Geoff

Re:Nick Denton “is much better at tearing things down” I disagree. Personally I find that blogging in itself is neutral it is as good at building things up (I bought my tablet PC and think much kinder thoughts about Microsoft due to Scoble, Similarly with English Cut etc. as it is at destroying.
http://workerbeesblog.blogspot.com Elisa Camahort

As I commented somewhere else that I can’t remember (and there’s something I really need: some tool that lets me track where I’ve commented and remember to follow the conversation) I am sick to death of all the awards in this industry old folks, newbies or otherwise.
How much validation do we all need? We have more awards for bloggers than Hollywood has for their industries, and that’s saying a lot.
There’s another one I heard of that’s going on now…the Webettes? You’d think as a BlogHer organizer I’d be all for ‘em, but I can’t even bring myself to go check out the site, let alone nominate people.
It’s pretty sad when an industry that’s been around less than a decade is already generating ennui!
http://thomashawk.com Thomas Hawk

Jeff,
You are right. People are making too much to do about the HP story. Personally I applaud and commend David Gee for recognizing a mistake was made and then having enough integrity to admit the mistake and say that HP wouldn’t do it again.
I myself am responsible for some of this buzz though as when I had not heard back from anyone from HP I submitted the story to Slashdot and to a number of bloggers, Gillmor included, that have more influence in the blogosphere than I do. Although many of the articles (including the Slashdot post) were published after Gee publicly admited the mistake, the wheels of promotion (or amplification of the story if you will) had already been set in place. The toothpaste was out of the tube so to speak.
I’m not disappointed that the story got the attention because I think it is a good lesson for other companies who would chose to put up corporate blogs and enable comments.
Still, I think at this point people should be more focused on the positive outcome than the initial removal of the comment. David Gee and HP did something admirable and that is the important thing. And certainly everyone deserves second chances. I myself have screwed up many times and hopefully we are all forgiving enough that when someone does do the right thing we can thank them for it and move on.
http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media peter caputa

Jason Kottke has some stuff that tracks where he’s left comments.
http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media/2005/05/flattery_will_g.html pc4media

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

Or atleast a few good links into your weblog.
http://furrier.typepad.com John Furrier

I have to agree with you Jeff on this. As I mentioned on Susan’s blog “my philosophy is “build and industry first” then give out awards.. putting stakes in the sand this early kinda looks stupid.” Personally it really makes Technorati look bad. I get the impression that they care more about conferences than building a good fuckin product and their product does need work.
http://pr.typepad.com John Cass

Do you remember the PR disaster with Intel a few years ago. I think the blog has given companies the ability to find and react to negative PR much more quickly.
http://www.alierra-software.com Helen, software developer

frankly speaking I don’t have much trust in blogging though I think that they keep me aware of the trends in different fields of our life. But any serious political or economical information I wouldn’t trust.