Marketing Roadmaps

Archives for August 2006

The A-list follies

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Subtitle: "A bunch of white guys linking around"

Starring: All the usual suspects

Lots of chatter about the A-list again. This time spawned by a  Nick Carr post  that likened the A-list to feudal barons, with the rest of us, the serfs. Funny post, much of which I agree with, some perhaps not, but that’s not what this post is about. That has been done already this week. In fact,  most (not all) of the current conversation seems like nothing more than a rehash of a similar cycle a few months ago, and a similar cycle a few months before that and so on and so forth. Perhaps a few different players, but also many of the same. How does it go, you ask? Well, someone (in this case Carr) brings up the issue of the A-list and the long tail, in some form or other. And they’re off.

A bunch of white guys linking around. Lots of posts that say it’s a big problem because "they" won’t link to "us." Or if "they" do, it is at the price of a link to them, thus perpetuating the A-lister’s position at the top of the heap. The opposing view (A-listers and others) includes concepts like  poo, piffle, this isn’t really a problem, anybody can rise to the top, it doesn’t matter, get over yourself. And so on. With varying degrees of civility.

"A-listers" feel attacked. Z-listers, downtrodden. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here’s the thing. There’s an A-list in blogging, as in just about everything. It’s a fact. It’s also a problem. I also believe that in blogging, it doesn’t need to matter. We can make it NOT matter. At least not so much.

Wishing the A-list and associated mentality would go away just won’t make it so, and I for one have better things to do. Names may come and go on the LIST, but it will exist. There is always a top of the list, and we all can’t be on it.  In any field, blogging included, some of the stars get to the top for the right reasons (fill in the blank on what you think is a right reason here), and others not. And my opinion about who deserves and who doesn’t won’t be the same as yours. That’s just the way it is.

In part because life isn’t fair and no matter what "they" told you, it really isn’t a meritocracy. Everyone does NOT stand an equal chance to become president of the USA, even though it does seem that you don’t have to be particularly bright to climb that mountain.

So if there’s a "big lie," that’s it — everyone won’t rise to the top simply on merit. There just isn’t enough room. But… that does not mean that those at the top don’t deserve to be there. Many do. Or that if you aren’t at the top of the list, you don’t have merit. There are systemic barriers in blogging just like in real life. And as the media companies dig in, some of the systemic barriers in blogging may get higher, not lower.

It stinks, and it’s hard to change it. But we can talk about it. That is how we make it not matter. And maybe even drive some change, but that’s a topic for another day. We need to keep talking about the A-list and the associated issues. And we need make sure that we’re also exposing people to the long tail. Not just the popular voices. Or the loudest. Or the crankiest. Sure, some bloggers wish to be "on the list."  Others don’t care. But they all have a voice, whether they are number 1, 10 or 100,000.

Let’s start by forgetting the foolishness that the blogosphere is a pure meritocracy. Sure, merit matters, but so do a lot of other things. Assuming that those at the top are the "smart" ones to the exclusion of the rest is plain and simple stupidity. New bloggers, casual readers, everyone, needs to be reminded of this on a regular basis. If that means we have to have the A-list blog debate every few months, so be it.

Don’t sweep the problems of gender/ racial bias and marginalization under the rug. Expose them to the light of day on a regular basis, so people are aware. And perhaps take a little more time to investigate, to dig, to find an alternative viewpoint.

If we stop talking about the issues, they most definitely won’t get solved. We will be stuck with the Technorati 100 (blecch).

But, let’s try not to take it too personally. Because it really isn’t about you. It’s about the system. Speaking only for myself, when I criticize the underlying biases in the systems we use for blog discovery, I’m not accusing the A-list barons of deliberately setting out to keep the Z-list serfs on the farm or you of sexism. I can’t do anything about you (only you can) and I’m not that interested in trying.

What I am doing is pointing out a systemic problem that we should all wish to solve. Whether we are on the top of the list or the bottom.

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Summertime

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"Summertime and the livin’ is easy,
Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high.
Oh your daddy’s rich, and your ma is good lookin’,
So hush, little baby, don’ yo’ cry.

One of these mornin’s you goin’ to rise up singin’,
Then you’ll spread yo’ wings an’ you’ll take the sky.
But till that mornin’, there’s a-nothin’ can harm you
With Daddy and Mammy standin’ by."
(Summertime, from Porgy and Bess, Gershwin, Heyward and Gershwin)

This past week has been pretty busy, and I really didn’t have all that much to say, so the blog went a bit silent. Lots of client work right now, so this state of affairs may continue until Labor Day, with maybe one post per week. Never fear, though, I will be back come September …

I did want to share one truly amazing thing that happened last weekend. I took my mother and son up to Boothbay Harbor Maine for a long weekend (while my husband enjoyed his two-day golf school at home). Boothbay Harbor  is a lovely place, and I highly recommend it. But that’s not the amazing thing.

We were eating our lunch outside on the 2d floor deck at this small cafe. Unbeknownst to us, the deck was actually over the water. My son was playing with a couple of plastic cars he had just bought, with his own money, when one rolled off the table, off the deck and into the drink. He was pretty upset and no amount of telling him that we could go buy another one would console him.

Here’s the amazing part.

A man at an adjoining table who had just finished his lunch asked if the car was still floating, When Douglas replied Yes, the man proceeded to go down on the dock, asked the manager of an adjoining restaurant if he could borrow their little row boat, poled over to the car and retrieved it.

There is a lot of unpleasantness in the world. And occasionally an unexpected act of kindness like this that restores your faith. Whoever, wherever you are, thanks again. You made our day.

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Shel Holtz has assembled the thinking from a number of folks this week about blog monitoring on a list at the New PR wiki. Check it out. Add your own thoughts.

Lots of people commenting on Google’s nastygrams about the use of its trademark "Google" as a generic. I expect Google knows it can’t prevent the use of “Google” as a generic, but they have to make these efforts to defend the trademark to keep it from passing *legally* into the generic. If it does that — becomes a legal generic — the word could be used inside someone else’s product name, and Google’s brand value literally stolen. You cannot trademark a generic term. Robert Scoble gave the best example: Google wouldn’t want to see a new product called "Microsoft Google," would they?

So they make these “good faith” efforts to defend the trademark against improper use. They have to use the proper legal language and so on to make the case strong that they defended the mark in case they ever need it in a full-blown trademark defense. No wishy washy or nudge nudge wink wink letters.

I doubt they really want to prevail and stifle the word of mouth branding they get when we talk about "Googling" something. Think about it, the only way to “win” this battle is to lose the dominant market position so that you no longer define the market. I haven’t heard the term ‘Xerox’ in reference to photocopies in a long time. But ‘Kleenex’ for ’tissue’ is still going strong. Did Xerox do a better job than Kimberly-Clark defending the mark and getting us to switch to the actual generic term ‘photocopy’? Doubt it. Reality is: Xerox no longer defines the market for copiers, so the mark no longer works as well as a generic.

It is quite schizophrenic really — you achieve the goal of becoming the definition of the segment, and then you have to spend time and money preventing people from using you as the definition of the segment. Catch-22.

I’m sure Google would rather be Kleenex than Xerox.

(Some of these Google thoughts were originally posted as comments on Sherrilynne Starkie and Neville Hobson’s blogs.)

Oh, and the lyrics at the beginning of this post? I Googled ’em.

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Week’s end wrap-up, August 10 2006

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Things have been pretty serious on the Roadmap lately,  so I thought I’d wrap up the week with some lighter topics.

Starting with my favorite post-BlogHer post: My Thoughts on BlogHer 06 by  Millie Garfield (Thoroughly Modern Millie/My Mom’s Blog). I wish everyone could take as much joy out of life as Millie clearly does.

We have a hummingbird in the garden. This may not seem like much to many of you, but with 4 dogs and 3 cats, birds have been known to view our yard with some suspicion. We had a hummer a couple of years ago, so I started putting out hummer food, but this week was the first time I had seen one since that first sighting in 2004. They are the most amazing birds. I will try to get a picture, although I doubt I’ll be able to capture it.

Instead, I will share a photo of a Rufous Hummingbird  taken by my cousin, who is an absolutely amazing bird photographer. This photo appeared on the cover of a bird magazine (name of which escapes me.)


photo copyright Thomas Johnson

I’m off tomorrow, and won’t be online again until late Sunday, so I wish you all a wonderful weekend!

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Open your eyes: Blogs and gender

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Interesting conversation over at Neville Hobson’s blog about gender. Neville started by stating that gender of a blog author doesn’t matter to him — what matters to him is the content.

Of course, content is what matters. Good writing, interesting ideas and original thought are what make you want to read, and continue reading past the first post. But gender does impact how likely it is that you will find a blog. As I commented on his blog, in a specific search, the odds may be a bit more even, but:

"Where it gets sticky is when you search a blog directory on a broad term like “public relations.” I just did it on technorati (http://www.technorati.com/blogs/public relations) and the first 9 results are written by men. And the 10th is Marketing Profs.

Same with the memetrackers, especially in the tech space – there does seem to be a male bias (see Chris Carfi’s post http://www.socialcustomer.com/2006/08/mr_rivera_tear_.html)

And then there are the lists. Sure there are blogs written by women on the various top-whatever lists, but they are predominantly (still) written by men. And when you look at who they link to, you should not be surprised if their chums are also lots of guys."

And the conversation continued from there, with a great deal of back and forth between Neville and me, along with comments by Kami Huyse, Yvonne DiVita, Sherrilynne Starkie and Carmen Van Kerckhove as well as a previous comment by Amy Gahran.

I’m not suggesting anyone should read a blog or link to a blog simply because it is by a woman.

Here’s the thing, though. We tend to "hang out" in an online community of like-minded people. I forget which one of my respected PR and marketing colleagues pointed this out (identify yourself and get the recognition you deserve) but our virtual communities, not unlike our real ones, are about 50-100 people. We read many of the same blogs, we comment, we make an effort to meet up at conferences, and so on. You may belong to one or more overlapping communities, and even some very dis-similar ones if you have wide-ranging interests. But it is quite likely that you’ll gravitate toward one. For  me, it is the collective group of PR/marketing blogs (big surprise there!). I read lots of other things too, but not as deeply. For example, I like the shows created by Joss Whedon, but I only read Whedonesque regularly.

In other words, in most subjects, I skim the surface, whereas in my chosen area, I take a pretty deep dive.

When we take that "deep dive" into a subject, in some subjects, like PR, we are likely to be finding blogs by men and women, and choosing them based on the content we find there, not the gender of the author. In other subjects, like technology, you will find women, but you have to look hard. The men have a far bigger profile. And there are not many women at the top.

When we skim, odds are  that our list will have more male authors than female, simply because the men are easier to find. I’ll use politics as an example: I scan about half a dozen political blogs. Four are "owned" or written by men, while only two are driven by women, Ariana Huffington, Huffington Post  and Chris Nolan, Spot-on.

Gender doesn’t make you a better writer or thinker. Gender shouldn’t matter in the blogosphere, or anywhere else for that matter, unless you are picking a mate, and perhaps not even then, unless reproduction is one of your goals.

But no matter how often or loudly we say that gender doesn’t matter,

it does.

And that’s why BlogHer (and other efforts to even the playing field) are so important. We aren’t proposing some sort of "blog affirmative action" where you must have so many women or minorities in your feed reader. That’s simply absurd.

What I, and many other women, suggest is that you examine your biases — conscious and sub-conscious — and make a choice. Stay in your comfort zone, where you know everybody and they know you. Or take a step out, a virtual "walk on the wild side," and look for new voices. Perhaps even ones that disagree with you. We could all use a bit more diversity and a little less "group think."

Gender doesn’t  matter when it comes to smart thinking. But it is an issue. So please, folks, open your eyes. I know it’s unpleasant to remember that we still don’t have equality of the sexes, but we don’t. Ignoring it does NOT make it go away.

You may think you’re being gender blind, but I’d tell you, you are simply blind about the issue of gender.

A final example. Some have wondered why we need a women’s blogging conference. We don’t have men’s blogging conferences, they say…. After I get through banging my head on the wall at that, I remind them, that’s because most conferences ARE men’s conferences. They just aren’t advertised that way. Bringing these issues to light, and creating a space where women (and like-minded men) could work on them together, is why BlogHer was founded and why so many women of different backgrounds embrace it. As Mary Hunt points out, we are part of a long tradition of women getting together to build strength in numbers. Susan B. Anthony anyone???

Be truly gender-neutral. Seek out the different voices. Not because they are women or minorities but because you understand that the system favors a dominant group (in tech, it’s white guys, sorry), and you want to push past that to meet some new folks with some new ideas.

Who maybe aren’t just like you.

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