TechCrunch article

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

There is an insightful blog post at TechCrunch on online 
"authority" that may interest some members of this list.  Here is 
the link:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/10/are-blogs-losing-their-authority-to-the-statusphere/

The thesis is that "authority" for blogs (yes, in the Web 2.0 
world, blogs have authority, and Technorati is the ISI of the 
blogosphere) is changing, as new technologies (e.g., Twitter) 
begin to redefine online communications. Blog authority works 
pretty much like citations analysis for journals, by counting 
inbound links (Google works this way, too).

Yes, I know, I know, the vaporings on blogs, not to mention such 
services as Twitter, hardly resemble the careful work of a 
research article.  But they will.  Or rather it will be the other 
way around, as the academic community continues to adapt consumer 
technologies to its own purposes.  Recall that before there was a 
Google Scholar there was a Google.

This is where we should be putting our attention, not in 
retrospection (mass digitization, open access, etc.) but 
innovation.

Joe Esposito