I get a real kick out of it when people start pontificating on why the tech blogosphere is becoming nothing more than self-fulfilling chamber filled with the dull echos of me-too posting that attach themselves like leeches to the supposed brilliant writings of the blogosphere mucky mucks.

It is even funnier when these so-called blogging heavy thinkers use the post by a really intelligent blogger who probably couldn’t careless if he saw the top 100 of Techmeme or not. I’m not sure how well known Mark Evans is within the tech blogosphere as I only found him because of FriendFeed but the moment I read one of his posts his feed became a part of my daily reading.

Whether I agree with Mark or not it doesn’t matter because in the end his posts make you think. Much like the one he wrote today that Mr. Winer used as a launching pad for another one of his self-gratifying diatribes; and which also became this weekend’s bitchmeme. As for Mark’s post  - well as much as I would like to suggest that he is whacked out of his mind, the truth of the matter is that he is right.

However there is one other thing that Mark missed in his fine breakdown of why there is this lack of originality.

Reading Audience.

This is the one thing that probably 90% of all bloggers currently typing their little hearts out are missing. Without an audience you could write War and Peace or author the next great Magna Carta and it won’t matter one iota. What is the point of pouring your heart and soul into a post when you can almost be assured of no readership to appreciate it. In turn you can dash off a 20 line post that insults or verbally slaps around one of the blogging upper crusts and you had better hope your server is up to snuff to survive the onslaught.

Regardless of where we all are within the blogosphere we would be liars if we didn’t admit that we write because we want people to read those posts, to talk about those post and to inspire a conversation around those posts. The reality is that unless you strike it really frikken lucky it ain’t gonna happen. So instead we start riding the Techmeme train or become parrots on the shoulders of the top echelon of bloggers in the hopes that some of their glory will rub off on our own posts.

Whether we like it or not we become the me-too bloggers but that isn’t always so bad because as Frederic at The Last Podcast says 

the me-too bloggers are an important part of the Techmeme ecosystem, because they are the ones who make the interesting stories float to the top.

Plus if you think about it since the original post by Mark hit Techmeme Mr Winer pulled a me-too by using the post for his own advantage and to keep his name in the news for the day. So if it is good enough for Mr. Winer to pull a me-too then it can’t be all that bad for the rest of us can it

Conversation Tags: Mark Evans, Techmeme, originality, blogging