Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Wednesday

Who decides what weblogs are "important"?

Jim Grisanzio of Sun Microsystems has an interesting article up on his site this morning, a reaction to the recent Fortune article Blogs that Matter, in which Jim says: "the media doesn't get to choose "who matters" for us anymore. We do."

My gut reaction was "You go, Jim!" but upon reflect, I think Jim's wrong in a quite important way, actually.

Here's the problem: the most important weblogs are those that have credibility, and credibility comes both from having something smart and coherent to say and being granted marketplace credibility from other credible sources citing or linking to your blog. It's a chicken and egg problem, because I think it's phenomenally difficult to get credibility in the online world without the help of other sources, other already recognized industry experts being involved.

That's where the established media does prove important -- and no, Fortune didn't deem to list either my Intuitive Life Business Blog or Ask Dave Taylor blog -- because even when it's flawed, the magazine and newspaper editorial process does increase the credibility of its articles, particularly when compared to the never-ending stream of "shoot from the hip" half-baked blogger pieces online.

We're starting to see a small circle of high profile bloggers who can...