Over the last four three days, Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo has brought out the best and worst within the blogosphere.
Without a doubt, bloggers quickly and effectively sliced, diced, analyzed and scrutinized the deal – providing excellent in-depth insight into what it could mean for Microsoft, Yahoo and the online economy.
At the same time, however, there seemed to be a lot of pilling on by people who just wanted to be part of the conversation but really had little or nothing material or interesting to add. Rather than just make a comment, many bloggers felt compelled to write a post that took up real estate but didn’t push the conversation forward at all. (You just had to take a quick look at Techmeme to see the flurry of activity.)
There were many posts that simply parroted announcements by Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. And there were a lot of posts that just reported on what others bloggers were saying as opposed to offering even a small nugget of original thought.
Not to suggest that I’ve never been guilty of piling on but one of the downsides of everyone being able to part of the conversation is many people jump in without having much to say. When major news breaks, the urge to add their two cents is irresistible as if the idea of staying on the sidelines while others play is just not acceptable.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with everyone talking at the same time. Maybe that’s the beauty of blogging. But sometimes all that noise makes it difficult to hear what people are really saying.
Update: The New York Times has a good story on Google’s effort to “torpedo” the Microsoft-Yahoo deal.
Technorati Tags: Blogs, Microsoft, Yahoo
MSFT-YHOO: Some Conversation and Lots of Noise
Over the last four three days, Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo has brought out the best and worst within the blogosphere.
Without a doubt, bloggers quickly and effectively sliced, diced, analyzed and scrutinized the deal – providing excellent in-depth insight into what it could mean for Microsoft, Yahoo and the online economy.
At the same time, however, there seemed to be a lot of pilling on by people who just wanted to be part of the conversation but really had little or nothing material or interesting to add. Rather than just make a comment, many bloggers felt compelled to write a post that took up real estate but didn’t push the conversation forward at all. (You just had to take a quick look at Techmeme to see the flurry of activity.)
There were many posts that simply parroted announcements by Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. And there were a lot of posts that just reported on what others bloggers were saying as opposed to offering even a small nugget of original thought.
Not to suggest that I’ve never been guilty of piling on but one of the downsides of everyone being able to part of the conversation is many people jump in without having much to say. When major news breaks, the urge to add their two cents is irresistible as if the idea of staying on the sidelines while others play is just not acceptable.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with everyone talking at the same time. Maybe that’s the beauty of blogging. But sometimes all that noise makes it difficult to hear what people are really saying.
Update: The New York Times has a good story on Google’s effort to “torpedo” the Microsoft-Yahoo deal.
Technorati Tags: Blogs, Microsoft, Yahoo