My first title for this post was "Blogging and the Infinite Verticalisation of the Internet" – honestly, I have no idea whether verticalisation is a word or whether there even is a word for this concept, but it was a coy (too coy, so I changed it) introduction to something that’s been on my mind for a while and a good place to start this post. I’ve had a splinter in the brain for a while over exactly why blogging strikes me, perhaps even limbically, as one of the most important developments we’ve seen on the ‘net in about forever – so, the last couple of years or so.
And yesterday I had lunch with an old friend and a new friend who are with some other folks very successfully launching a marketing consulting firm here in Toronto with some really cool ideas, and we fastened on blogging, because it’s an emergent part of what they do and because I love talking about it, and we got into some pretty provocative conversation about where the power of blogging lies.
And then afterwards I had my regular monthly meeting with a couple of very smart friends – one a serial entrepreneur with a lot of success in starting up and letting go of interesting businesses and the other a lawyer and management consultant who has spent 15 years in business process outsourcing and on the line in one IT or telecom business or another – where we discuss business ideas, what’s happening in tech, and such-like, and we fastened on blogging, because it’s an emergent technology and because I love talking about it, and we got into some pretty provocative conversation about where the power of blogging lies.
And after all of that stimulation, it occurred to me. Blogging is the killer app of community. (Finally, there is a killer app of community.)
Because it allows us to carve our world into an almost infinite number of interest-based segments, and create a community for every single one of them.
And that matters because with the low cost, the long tail matters (read Joe Krauss for a wow! discussion about Chris Anderson’s long tail theory in use). Every incremental voice costs almost nothing to add, yet adds to the stickiness of the community, and so on, ad infinitum. Blogging allows even the narrowest of communities to exploit the power of the long tail ….
And that’s why blogging is the killer app of community….