Tim O’Reilly has at Smoothspan, the Web adds to this problem because it “eliminates friction and encourages herdlike behaviour.”
That will come as no surprise to anyone who has noticed the proliferation of identical Web 2.0 apps or Facebook widgets, or the explosion of identical me-too posts on Techmeme — and part of Tim’s point about Techmeme is that the “appeared on the site, and here I am writing about it (wow, this is so “meta,” isn’t it?).
Am I writing about it because I want to move up the leaderboard? Not consciously — but that might be one of the outcomes regardless of my motivation (and I know, as I mentioned in a comment on Tim’s post, that he is secretly enraged at the fact that I am higher on the leaderboard than him, and his post is really a clever strategic move designed to improve his position).
But does that make Techmeme bad? Gabe argues in Tim’s comments that it doesn’t, and I would tend to agree. As he puts it:
“I think there is a self-reinforcing effect with Techmeme, but I believe it’s (1.) overstated and (2.) as often good as bad.”
Do pile-ons occur? Obviously, they do. And do many of those posts essentially consist of a re-posted excerpt and a “what he said” kind of comment? Definitely. Every system has a certain amount of noise. But I think on balance the posts that do add something to the conversation — and there are many of them on the average day — bring enough value to make it worthwhile.
Take Tim’s post itself (more meta): the sub-links included Bob Warfield’s post, which I thought had lots of value, as well as a follow-up to his original post, in which he argues that regardless of Techmeme’s utility, the larger point he was trying to make is that if everyone is looking in the same place then they will ultimately find the same kinds of things — and that he prefers to look where others aren’t, in order to find out what might be coming next.
That’s a fair point — and worth thinking about. And what does Tim think is coming next? Using trends in financial markets as a guide, he says that he thinks there
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