I’m thinking that The ascendancy of Hacker News & the gentrification of geek news communities, by Rabble, is, in its quiet way, one of the most important think pieces I’ve read in quite a while. It’s pretty clear that online aggregations of individual contributions are occupying a bigger and bigger slice of the spectrum of useful information sources. And also clear that this new landscape isn’t stable, but steadily shifting underfoot.

First off, I’d recommend reading the comments on the “Gentrification” essay along with it. Like the a couple of the contributors, I think the pattern of conversational flow is accurately described, but am uncomfortable with the use of “gentrification”.

Here are my take-aways, the first couple lifted more or less directly from the essay:

  • Success as an aggregator is ephemeral.

  • The pressure of the SEO slime is continuous and unrelenting; a significant evolutionary force on whatever it is online communities are becoming.

  • The effect of individual burn-out is maybe understated. Consider Slashdot; one reason it has less traffic these days is that the editorial quality filters are pathetic compared to back then; the regime where CmdrTaco and friends had the wheel and just instinctively knew the wheat from the chaff was probably just not sustainable.

  • The value of following a few carefully-selected primary sources and keen-eyed individual observers just can’t be overstated. The right selection of blog and Twitter feeds can put you in a situation where you’ve already seen most of the good bits of today’s Reddit or equivalent. Yeah, it takes a little more time than just dropping by an aggregator. Whether this is a good trade-off depends on what your job is.

  • It should be painfully obvious that these lessons probably apply to news loci outside the technology ghetto; today’s hot news fora for politics or sex or knitting are just as vulnerable to online traffic’s fickle flow patterns.



Contributions

Comment feed for ongoing:Comments feed

From: Ethan (Jul 17 2008, at 22:19)

Slashdot seems to be behind the ball continually–I don't know how they are organized internally, but regularly I get information 1-3 DAYS before it shows up on the main page of slashdot (via feeds, etc). [This is your fourth point–but you knew that].

Speaking of politics: my roommie & I were just talking about how political controversies flare huge now, but briefly. I pointed to the internet and the fact that everyone can have their say in a matter of hours and _it goes away_. I'm not sure if 100 short-lived controversies are better than 30 long-lived, but it _feels_ better (as most are chaff anyways).

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From: Josh Robb (Jul 18 2008, at 08:01)

Seems like ephemerality is the new black - or at least the new postmodern.

See: The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond - http://www.philosophynow.org/issue58/58kirby.htm

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From: len (Jul 24 2008, at 06:04)

Someone in Canada says the days of the free internet are about to end with Canada being the test target.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9627

Any truth in this?

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