Adam Green has announced his desire to create some sort of a group blog about memetrackers.
I have very mixed thoughts about this, but most of them are not positive.
On the one hand, I use the memetrackers a lot and would be in favor of anything that helps them become even better. On the other hand, Gabe and Kevin seem pretty active right now when it comes to talking about memetrackers whenever they are discussed (and I’m sure Matt and others would join in if asked), so why do we need a central place for them to talk about this?
I was a part of the conversation here and on Steve Rubel’s blog that Adam cites as the inspiration for this new group blog. If these conversations are already occurring naturally in the wild, why do we need to try to grow them in a lab?
Isn’t the nature and goal of the blogosphere to promote distributed conversations? Maybe if Adam allowed comments on his blog some of the conversation would be occurring there right now.
Would those guys really want to blog together about the future of a space they are battling to own? Would Coke and Pepsi do a soda blog?
The bigger problem I have with this concept, however, is the potential for exclusion. Perhaps unintentionally, but the potential is there. For crying out loud, they have formed an advisory board to decide who should be able to participate.
That takes a second, not a committee. Gabe, Kevin, Matt, Laurence and anybody else who has built a memetracker.
Not yet addressed, but looming large over all of this, is who else gets to participate in this group blog? Just the memetracker founders or a select group of other people? If so, who selects them? The same advisory board or another one?
What happens if we need to change a lightbulb?
I hate to rain on someone’s parade, but I don’t like where this seems to be going.
Newsome.Org 