August 16, 2006
@ 11:01 AM
Comments [3]
More Talkers Than Doers

Robert Scoble has a blog post entitled Blogs and Digg, not geeky enough? where he writes

I notice a general trend looking through blogs, TechMeme, and Digg. There aren’t many coders anymore.

Five years ago the discussions were far more technical and geeky. Even insiderish. When compared to the hype and news of today.

It makes me pine for ye old RSS vs. Atom geek flamefests.

Anyone else notice this trend?

Sites like TechMeme and Digg hone in on what is popular to the general audience even if it is the general audience interested in software. There are more people interested in the impact of software-powered companies like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MySpace, Youtube, and so on than there are people interested in the technology that powers these companies. There are going to be more people speculating about Google's next new service than those interested in a dissection of how the AJAX on one of Google's sites works. There are more people talking about Google Maps mashups than there are people talking about how to build them. There are more people interested in the next "Web 2.0" startup that Yahoo! is going to buy than are interested in technical language wars about whether Flash or AJAX is the way to go in building such sites. That's why you won't see Raymond Chen, Simon Willison or Jon Udell on TechMeme and Digg as often as you'll see the Michael Arringtons, Robert Scobles and  Om Maliks of the world.

This doesn't mean "there aren't many coders anymore" as Robert Scoble suggests. It just means that there are more people interested in the 'industry' part of the "software industry" than in the 'software' part. What else is new?


 

Categories: Technology

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Wednesday, 16 August 2006 16:44:18 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
It is also a product of the internet's continued growth beyond 'techies.' 5-7 years ago the percentage of techies online was higher. Every day there are now more and more non-technical people online doing their own thing (i.e.: Live Spaces) and that saturates the overall numbers. I would venture to guess that there are actually more techies publishing online now then there were 5 years ago (like myself), but they're just not as visible because the overall online population has grown so much.
tod hilton
Wednesday, 16 August 2006 22:19:49 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
I'd echo Ted's comment - five years ago, most of the popular bloggers that would bubble to the top via services like Scoble mentions would be the ones doing the heavy lifting of getting the whole blogging infrastructure up and running. In doing so, there was a lot of code.

Now that even some mom can blog about almost knocking herself out while changing their kids diaper (http://annenahm.com/?p=113). Whole diatribes on the merits of shiney new XML spec xyz and the mertis of implementing it using foo-oriented techniques probably won't get as much linkage.
Derek
Thursday, 17 August 2006 04:04:51 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Dare, well said, I agree. I'd add that the coder communities are more fragmented than the Tech industry watchers as well.
Gabe
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