Layering the blogosphere

2006-11-02

I'm understandaby pretty interested in how IT analysts, bloggers and so on interact and overlap - the nascent "influencer community". A conversation with James earlier today resulted in 4 levels of documentary process, from the bottom:

- blogging - writing about the facts of the matter, often in specific interest areas

- aggregation - reading lots of blogs and other sources and summarising what's being written about

- analysis - consolidatation and interpretation to deliver some understanding about what it means and what could/should happen as a result

- influence - the ability to project the information or interpretation to an appropriate audience.

The point is its about roles, not people. I'm an analyst, always have been in many ways (even when I was an IT manager) and always will be looking to understand how things fit together. To be frank I don't read that many blogs (tens rather than hundreds), and I am thankful to the aggregators who have the inclination and skill to read multiple sources and summarise them. Often aggregators will analyse, and I know analysts that aggregate, the more the merrier - and all of the above rely on some kind of influence - if a tree falls in a forest and I write about it but nobody reads my blog, did it make a sound? So - am I a blogger? Could do better. An aggregator? Sadly not. An analyst? I do hope so!