Once in a while, a virtual blog thread, starting with a single blog post, reverbrates around the blogosphere to create a web of posts, comments and re-posts. It is a unique form of knowledge creation, sharing, and amplification that speaks to the distinctiveness and longevity of this medium for its relevance and utility to its participants. Much more than a single drop of water in a pool creating a concentric system of waves; each post, comment, and trackback is in of itself a drop in the knowledge pool, together, creating an intertwined pattern of waves which cooperatively presents a picture that uniquely conveys the thoughts of the “collective” that no single person or blogger could ever hope to achieve. Even more amazing are the ways which clusters of consensus are formed through a repeating pattern of point and counter-points. Like a pendulum, each cluster seems to find a steady state (if only for a short time). Unlike message boards which are often driven by the madness of mobs (slasholes), blog threads seem to promote more diversity of opinions through higher number of consensus clusters despite of the pendulum effect. That alone, makes “this time” so much more different and better than the “last time” (web 2.0?).
Unless one actively participate in this medium, there is no way one can truly understand and comprehend the power and relevancy of immersing oneself in the middle or even periphery a “blogquake.” Why the random thought? I was going through my blogroll before the 49ers game and found an interesting set of posts that occupied me for the better part of the morning. Much more than interesting actually, I think I am better prepared for the challenges of my Monday morning reviews than I was last week . . . the true definition of relevancy. . .
(BTW random idea, be great if google or technorati can augment pagerank with algorithm which takes into consideration
1) “speed” of propagation to a cluster of posts
2) “originality/epicenter-ness” for a single post
Plus create a GUI for navigating around consensus clusters of blogs)
Below are the initial set of posts that got me started exploring the topic around “user-centricity.”
User triangulation: how to listen to customers
Getting Real: Forget feature requests
Listening to users considered harmful?
It Matters Who You Ask
Joe Wilcox on MSN Spaces
Innovation and listening to customers
