Tim O’Reilly on WSJ and the New Tastemakers

Great summary of a WSJ article by new media guru Tim O’Reilly:

Peter Brantley wrote: “[The]WSJ has an article on curation of online media sites … reported by if:book”:

“The Wall Street Journal has an interesting (and free) piece on the new class of individuals — filters, recommenders, editors, curators, call them what you will — that is becoming increasingly influential in directing attention traffic across the Web. …

“It all adds up to a pretty astonishing redefinition of what
“the media” is. The front page, the lead story, the primetime
lineup — all in constant renegotiation, constantly rearranged.
Yet still in so many ways dependent on the established sources
for the materials to be filtered (and probably in the future
for personal income, as is already beginning). Feeders and
filterers. The new media ecology doesn’t destroy the old one,
it absorbs it into a new relationship.”

Both the WSJ piece and the if:book commentary are worth a read. It’s interesting to see how each new layer of internet media grows its own group of tastemakers. When we first started doing internet marketing back in the early 90s, we mainly reached out to influential posters on newsgroups and mailing lists. Then it was various lists of lists featuring cool web sites. Then blogging (including sites like slashdot that the blogging community is only now (finally) acknowledging as one of its own.) Now it’s people who act as tastemakers on sites like digg, reddit and del.icio.us.