Ludoo

Nick Denton's New York Times interview mentioned today by Scoble gives me the occasion to write a few thoughts I have been ruminating after LesBlogs, which I have been discussing for the past week or so with David Tebbutt in an ongoing email exchange.

Is there a "blogging revolution"? Yes, despite what Denton says to the NYT reporter. But the revolution is over, what we are seeing now is its secularization. A few things struck me at LesBlogs, all distinctive characteristics of revolutionary movements that, having exhausted their innovative charge, turn themselves into institutions:

1. the emergence of a new, self-referential establishment with its periphery of sycophants and wannabes (including myself probably)
2. the superficiality and repetivity of many discussions, which showed a suspect resemblance to a political party's official doctrine (or a large company's vision)
3. the feel that much of what was being said was for the benefit of potential customers, or of the many journalists attending the conference

It's very clear to me that a new hierarchy/power structure has emerged, with lots of capital at its disposal with which to fuel enough hype to try and push social software in the enterprise. It won't be long before we see CEOs and top managers falling for the new buzzwords, and forcing blogs/wiki/etc, onto their users and IT departments, without having a clue what they're about.

As for LesBlogs, I have finally understood why Dave Winer insists that BloggerCon remains a users' conference...

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