Funmurphys: the Blog

It's All About Collaboration

I've written before that some people don't like blogs and really don't like how highly they rate with Google. Well, Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly the computer book publisher) writes approvingly:

"Robert Scoble just told a great story that vividly explains how users help to build Google's product. He describes discovering a new Iranian restaurant in Redmond, WA, and linking to their website. He notes that the site doesn't now show up in google, but that, because of his weblog, it will now: "Oh, did you just realize that this weblog is nothing more than metadata for Google to use? Yeah, you'd be right. Google figured out how to get people like me to go around and look at websites and add meta data about those websites. How did Google do that? By giving us power. Think about it. That's how Google pays us back for the work we're doing to improve its index."

There's a dark side to this story. Scoble told it in the context of rumors that advertisers are lobbying Google to de-emphasize blogs in calculating its page ranks. I trust Google to do the right thing because of their relentless focus on the user. If they adjust the impact of blogs, it will be to get a truer result for users rather than for advertisers. But you can't underestimate the short-sightedness of many big players. Asking Google to take blogs out of the input is like asking EBay to stop taking product from small players and only take it from an approved vendor list, or asking Amazon to take reviews only from publishers and approved journalists! It's the essence of the new paradigm that users help to build the product. "

So maybe it's not love, but at least it puts the whole shebang into perspective. As a blogger, I'm not engaged in a selfish narcisistic hobby, I'm engaged in a giant collaborative venture that brings value to others. Yeah baby, how very yeah!