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August 07, 2005

The Blogosphere: a Giant Engine for Finding Meaning

The blogosphere isn't a mere replacement for MSM -- it's something new.

An Important Distinction
Technorati is tracking 14 milliion weblogs. Let's make a distinction that for some reason few people are making yet. There are two distinct segments of the 'sphere. The largest is that of the personal weblogs, which are diary-oriented, and written mostly for family and friends. They typically have a few dozen readers. Then there is the segment of wide-appeal blogs, written on subjects of general public interest. These can have a wider readership, in some cases in the hundreds of thousands. The number of these is smaller, perhaps in the tens of thousands. The Truth Laid Bear ecosystem is currently tracking about 16,000 blogs with links from at least 5 other sites. In this post, I'm speaking of the wide-appeal blogs.

The Strengths of MSM
MSM excels at gathering information. They can often get it even when many of the people involved don't want to reveal it. This is a totally different skill set from analyzing that information. There is no reason to expect anyone to be good at both. MSM is so unskilled at information analysis, that it even applies the same pre-packaged analysis, to almost every story. According to MSM, almost every story means that GWB is bad, the Iraq war is bad, America is bad, capitalism is bad, and whoever the Democrats are running should be elected. Stories that can't be made to fit this analysis -- for example, the current Air America scandal, the Swift Boat vets of the 2004 Presidential campaign, or the U.N. report that Hussein had busted up giant factories capable of building WMD's and shipped them out of Iraq before and during the war -- are either ignored altogether, or printed once on a back page, and never discussed again.

The Strengths of the Blogosphere
Analysis, however -- figuring out what things mean -- what they were caused by, what they will cause, and how to apply that understanding to make new decisions -- is precisely what the blogosphere excels at. Go to any of the biggest blogs, and you will note that the majority of posts cite facts from MSM and elsewhere, and provide new analysis.

The Network Effect
This strength of the 'sphere is massively multiplied by the Network Effect. Let me give you an example. I was recently seeking advice for a business project. At an industry conference, at lunch, I sat next to someone who told me his view on how to accomplish a specific goal. But I had to ask myself, was he correct? Did he have an agenda? Later, speaking to an ad agency, I got the identical advice. Because the same advice had come from two very different people, with two very different ways of looking at the subject, it immediately became all but a certainty that this advice was correct.

The Internet multiplies this effect over hundreds of subjects and thousands of different bloggers and blog commenters. It's very powerful. It's a giant engine for finding meaning.

Postscript
The blogosphere stands on the shoulders of MSM. Without the fact-finding provided by MSM, the 'sphere in its current form would not exist.  

Needless to say, the 'sphere can generate original news reporting. Not only has it done so in many cases already, there are efforts underway to promote still more of this.

Update: Instalanche. Thanks, Glenn, and welcome, Instapundit readers!