I’m looking sideways at Tim Bray. Almost sounds dirty or sneaky, but its actually a reference to one of the most important aspects of communication on the web — the greatest value is often personal and organic. Individuals rather than professional organizations can offer the most credible insights and the message is typically delivered organically via the social networks we’ve established throughout our lives and linked together via the net.
The web is chalk full of information to the point that its overwhelming; which begs the question “where to look”? Do you settle on an aggregator or two or load up on a-listers? Tim is suggesting we “look sideways” instead and seek out credible individuals within the organizations that interest us the most and then rely on our social networks to pass us other meaty bits their unique angles offer up. There’s a safety in this approach that allows us to focus (who can keep up with the Internet news cycle after all) and bypass the misinformation created by eyeball pandering journalists who sometimes deliberately slant or misrepresent and often lack the technical acumen to provide meaningful insights even when they are being their dispassionate best.
As the snapshot from the New York Times above illustrates this phenomena is not confined to the geek class inside the tech industry, but is a broader trend that’s having an impact on how young people in the States are consuming political news. This leaves us with a couple of really big questions:
- how are people getting their information?
- how do you reach your audience if its got an organic cloaking device?
People are getting their information from all over — a combination of passive delivery via professional broadcast media, organic network references and self-initiated research (search) with the latter two being sourced from both individuals (sideways) and professionals (top-down). How this sourcing pie is sliced up will, of course, vary given the demographic and personal tastes of the individual. However, its clear that there’s a trend towards organic delivery of individual sources — passive broadcast, spin-handling, PR and professional journalists have jumped the shark.
The more interesting question is how do you reach your target audience via the organic information stream? I’m inclined to agree with Guy Kawasaki’s suggestion to target the fat cross-section of moderate influencers rather than the a-list. Its more than a numbers game though — moderate influencers aren’t in it for the eyeballs; they’re both consumers and participants who are more interested in spreading good ideas than self-promotion (see Pistach.io or The Deck for alternate models).
Below are a few of my favorite sideways looks. There are a boatload of others in my aggregator representing companies big and small (more Adobe staffers and community members than I can reveal without blushing). I would love to check out some of your favorites — leave them in the comments!
- Tim Bray - Sun
- John Dowdell - Adobe (JD’s blog is down while Adobe repairs MXNA, but its worth waiting for)
- John Nack - Adobe
- Tinic Uro - Adobe
- Steve Yegge - Google
- Greg Linden - Microsoft (formerly Amazon)
- Sam Ruby - IBM
- Michael Lopp - Apple
2 Comments
I totally agree with Mr. Bray. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using Twitter in earnest having finally “gotten it.” (@mrch0mp3rs) I started off with very few people to follow, and of that set, even fewer that regularly tweeted. So I added from the top lists — and they more or less suck. I didn’t think TechCruch dude particularly added anything of value, and while I like Mahalo and understand that this is how certain persons makes their paycheck, there’s just a lot of noise — very little signalling something interesting.
Now, by comparison, once I started following Dowdell, I hit up http://whoshouldifollow.com/ and that gave me lots more recommendations of Flash luminaries (Philip Kerman, Brajeshwar, Peter Elst to name a few) and since doing this, my Twitter experience has been much more interesting. It’s not that they talk Flash every tweet, but at least they’re not smug and after years of following and at times interacting with them on [flashcoders] and such, I certainly feel like when there’s something of value being shared, it hits a lot more to home.
@ Aaron - man your Dan Pink series rocked…I’m trying to think about how to incorporate it into an article. I think I’m finally coming around to twitter (meaning I might actually sign up). For a long time I sort of looked at as a nerd popularity contest and I’m to god damn old to play that (back the day I’d pop a cap in your ass and take your followers ). ;) However, I think I’m finally coming around on the topic (I too have had to figure out what the value of the network is in my own terms). When I join I’ll become your disciple.