I wanted to wait until the worst of the flu that was making me feel like a waste product from hell had decided to loosen its grip before writing on Mr. Arrington’s latest rant to be cunningly let loose on the blogosphere. I also figured that give it a few days and both the popular folks of the blogosphere would have their say plus Michael would slyly dribble out some more elusive tidbits and my commentary on the whole nonsense would as usual go through totally unnoticed.
I gotta admit Mr. Arrington has got the whole Techmeme-zation of when to post in order to maximize attention value down pat. Other than after 4PM on a Friday there is no better time than on a Wednesday also known as hump day newsflashes to grab the attention of bored to tears cubicle workers. Even though most rants by Mr. Arrington garner sufficient page view dollar returns there’s no reason to mess with success eh.
While the post had the requisite amount of self-effacing tripe about how he cares and tries to promote young promising bloggers I just about gagged up what little dinner I had managed to eat when he said he links back to them regardless of the fact that these bloggers might not always agree with him. The reality is that is nothing new for trackbacks or comments on TechCrunch to disappear because they might have had a strong counter view to the TechCrunch report.
Much is being made of the ending part of his post about creating a <gag>Dream Team</gag> of bloggers and using them in order to take apart his competition. Don’t fool yourself this is exactly what the intent is regardless of how he may have couched it in terms of blogger survival. The only survival Mr. Arrington is concerned with is the financial health of his bank account.
Some might suggest that this post is nothing but sour grapes and that I am whining again. Ya .. sure .. Look I’m an enough of a realist to know that I have as much of a chance of being a part of Mr. Arrington’s Blogging Dream Team as Google admitting it’s plans for world domination - it ain’t gonna happen and to be honest I would probably turn him down.
Sure I would love to make a comfortable living doing this blogging thing but I still like to believe that there is a community that is an integral part of the blogger experience. For me this Murdoch like plan to take over the blogosphere smacks of nothing more than a way to destroy that community. This isn’t to say that earning money as a blogger is a community destroying by-product. Creating a powerful centralized blogging powerhouse on the other hand could very well be.
Mr. Arrington makes it seem that as bloggers we need to have powerful networks behind us in order to survive and be heard. Well he could very well be right after all he’s the one jetting around from conference to conference and making a pile of money whereas I’m just a cranky old fart with nothing more than 20 some years of being involved with computers.
He may like to think that the way forward on the road to (his) success is by creating a blogging network that will scare the shit out of the (his) competition should he train his blogging ninjas on them. Myself I’ll take the small network of blogging friends that has grown organically and a group that has respect for each other based on ability not share value.
Knowing Mr. Arrington I wouldn’t be surprised if indeed he does go through with his idea. Unfortunately I don’t think that this would be a good thing to happen to the blogosphere as it has the potential to spark a wildfire that will benefit no-one.
Conversation Tags: TechCrunch, blogging dream team
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