Dave Rogers ruminates on last week’s Long Tail conversation and about how none of the Technorati folks have responded to his questions. He also takes on the Cluetrain Manifesto. Read the whole thing, its actually a good post if you’ve been following the topic (and links to previous posts to get you up to speed if you haven’t). One part in particular stood out to me, though:
Technorati, again, as near as I can tell, is held in positive regard, at least by the members of the “A-List.” I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if this was an act of inspired genius to create a list that simultaneously flatters the egos of the people most in a position to criticize the company, draws attention to itself, and exploits the attention-directing “authority” of high attention-earning webloggers (the A-List) to draw even more attention to itself. I’d say probably not, since it’s been done before; but it’s still a pretty effective way to garner attention and achieve a measure of insulation from criticism.
Which is a good (and very correct) observation.