The Nation of Taste-Makers
Codifying “via” links with confusing symbols is solving the wrong problem.
Honestly, once again, I think Marco nails it. I, too, am struggling with hat tip, and I’m relieved to find out that I’m on the conscientious side when it comes to via.
The symbols is just plain stupid. I saw them earlier on a different post and had absolutely no idea what they meant.
That said, I disagree with Marco’s assertion that giving attribution to the discoverer is unimportant. Humans need social cues like via and RT to create order from chaos - there are so many bloggers and twitter users, how do we know which to follow? Given attention is a finite resource, which people are most likely to reward me with good content?
Links provide credit to the original source, but we can’t follow every primary source on the Internet. That’s why Yahoo existed in the 90s and Google exploded 5 years later. And frankly, it’s a big reason why Twitter and Tumblr exist today - we need curators as much as we need primary sources. And attribution is the currency that separates curators from mundane readers.
Marco is simply dead wrong. He is stuck in mechanics of linking which is not an easy task to do well, but ignoring where the Internet is heading.
The Internet is simply too big to merely discover something anymore. Google is a hot wet mess of SEO hell. Everyone and their grandmothers have some sort of a blog or website. The amount of information pumped out on a daily basis is more than the sum total of information generation for all mankind’s history up till 2003. Think about that for a second, we are producing more user generated content in a day than exists in one thousand Library of Congresses*.
Dave is absolutely correct here. While folks like Marco may not call themselves “curators”, that is exactly what they are. They define and shape tastes because people like the stuff they create AND find. That is why Pinterest and Tumblr are so huge. What do you think all those reblogs, retweets, and repins are about? It is people giving social credence to your taste.
Taste-makers can now be anyone. This is the online equivalent of fashion magazines, art galleries, interior designers, food critics, and op-ed contributors. The difference is that anyone can now become an expert and the trusted opinion on a given topic. It is the Quora experience, the Yelp Elite reviewer, the Amazon Hall of Fame reviewer. Hell, I am the trusted opinion on all things dumplings because of my tours. Anyone can do some simple research and find great dumpling places, learn about Chinatown, and get educated on Chinese food culture. However, people choose to go on a tour because the alternative is hard and not as much fun.
Curation, taste-making or whatever you wish to call it is simply the democratizing factor of the Internet at work. Instead of getting caught up in curators versus creators is a silly argument because both are critical. Discovery is part and parcel to the creation experience because without taste-makers, most creations simply go ignored.
* This is merely the roughest of estimates so do not take this as an accurate measurement, it is merely to create a sense of scale.
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In other news, I wish someone had told me marco was posting on tumblr again, even if it’s just redirects to his main...
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Amen, marco: The fact that people have flown into Austin from all over the country to talk about how much credit they...
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Attribution is a problem I occasionally struggle with on this blog too. It is worse with image links, because sometimes...
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