January 11, 2007

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Blog Subscription Choices: Quality Vs. Relevance

Have you ever started getting really into some topic in which you're not really very interested, just because there's a good blog on the subject? That used to happen infrequently, but now that I am able to keep up with any blogs I want to thanks to Google Reader, it is happening more frequently.

For instance, I am very well informed about the bleeding edge of marketing. I wouldn't give a damn about marketing, but Seth Godin writes a damn good blog on the subject. I am interested in intellectual property law, but I am not at all interested in its application to counterfeit fashion. Yet, thanks to the blog of a former Professor of mine, I am rather learned on the subject. I also read up on highly intellectual issues tangential to contemporary Islam at 3 Quarks Daily, a million random consumer devices for which I don't have any desire at Engadget, Martin's musings about consumer protection at ConsumerAffairs.com, and pretty much anything Boing Boing sees fit to print.

The same things can also be said about certain DC bloggers. For instance, I don't really have any interest in DC Bachelor's misogynistic advice on how to have sex with random women and avoid being a "beta male," but his blog is written in a compelling and consistent voice, with the occasional controversy thrown in to sweeten the deal. So I read it. Ar-Jew-Tino's posts about how to survive in Buenos Aires are entirely irrelevant to me, but they're always funny. I'd still read Kathryn's defunct blog even whenever she was just posting her opinions on the latest episode of Project Runway, or some other such show.

I wonder the extent to which this habit might carry me away into pointless knowledge that is only a pastime in the reading, and not in the doing. Already I know all about the Dallas Mavericks, when I don't care about basketball at all, let alone the inner workings of that team's management. Eventually I'll find myself poring over the latest woodworking recaps, lawn maintenance blogs, car modders' smack-talking, and subwoofer reviews.

Increasingly, the central problem in our society has become filtering information out, whereas for all of recorded human history it has been acquisition of more information. But now we are inundated, and every niche is well-served if one can only find the right site. The long tail has had its wants met. On any given topic about which we are interested, we could easily add hundreds of blogs. And so the focus of technology shifts to determining relevance and quality. Google is the biggest example of that process. Google's search engine exists to narrow down some topic and give its user the most relevant links. "Web 2.0" is all about metadata. And what's the eventual intention of metadata, if it isn't trying to let us know what's worth consuming? But the result of the increasing amount of metadata is that we sometimes stumble upon gems where we otherwise wouldn't be looking. That's why a site like DC Blogs is so wonderful. It has tipped me off to great sites like Washington Cube, Brunch Bird, and Rock Creek Rambler. Now if only I could tear myself away from reading about DIY projects I never want to do for long enough to read them.

Posted at January 11, 2007 2:19 AM | Comments (5)

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