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Opinions have equal airtime but unequal credibility

Aug 6th 2008
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A few days ago, Hutch Carpenter wrote a post that talked about reader responses to shared items that appear in FriendFeed, that massive RSS feed aggregator.

A couple of his closing paragraphs summarize his argument quite well:

Sometimes people get exasperated that something they’ve blogged about or posted didn’t get a lot of traction, while an A-Lister talks about the same thing and everyone falls over themselves to Like, comment, share the content, etc. This is generally ascribed to an overly worshipful flock. I’m sure there’s a bit of truth in that.
However, I think an overlooked element is that a lot of the well-known figures out on the web have a strong narrative.
When they share something, it’s really part of the larger narrative they’ve been sharing with a lot of people over time.

Hutch described the narrative effect earlier in his post, referencing some thoughts from Robert Scoble:

There’s an additional factor [that determines how people respond to the items that you share compared to when other people share the same materials.] Here’s one way to describe it:
1. Experience and passions make up your narrative, the story of your life.
2. A narrative gives context.
3. Context loads the information you share with meaning.
4. Meaning draws interest by others.

Here are Hutch’s closing thoughts:

What’s Your Story?
I bring up A-Listers because its a familiar meme. But there are regular people who have a particularly strong narrative in a subject area. You see people reacting to the content they share, because it fits what they’re about.

Strong narratives make people strong Information Filters.

How about you? What’s the story of your life?

This topic is a bit difficult for me write about because it hits upon of my own insecurities as a writer and a blogger. I touched on this the other day when I wrote about my first anniversary of being a blogger:

The other ongoing revelation, of course, is that I’m continually learning how much I have to learn about blogging, technology, communication, and life in general. Every time that I think I have a firm grasp on what’s going on, I discover something new that makes me realize how much there is to learn.

The fact that I experience the occasional feeling of sheepishness and embarrassment is probably a good sign. Despite Robert Seidman’s concern that I really was sending out an SOS (which I wasn’t, I just liked the song lyric), I’m not getting ready to throw in the towel. It’s just that I’m becoming more self-conscious about communicating opinions off the cuff without doing my research and analysis first.

Photo by ElecktraCute

I believe that a number of people, especially when commenting on other people’s work, freely give opinions without necessarily understanding the details of what they are talking about. Sometimes I have to lump myself into this category, although I’m trying to be more conscious of it. A number of us consume a lot of media during the course of the day and, to be blunt, we leave a comment on it which is more like a calling card or a small piece of self-promotion than reasoned analysis.

One of the reasons that we do this is to make our presence known in the blogging world and in other forms of social media. The problem, however, is that many times we misunderstand what’s being written or we put our own slant on the topic for our own reasons.

Is this a bad thing?

I guess it depends on your motivation. It probably works well as a piece of self-promotion, but on the other hand it might just leave people with the wrong impression about you. Or, in some cases, a regrettably accurate picture of you.  In other words, yes, it is a bad thing.

Getting back to Hutch’s point: all opinions won’t have equal weight in the eye of the informed reader. The informed reader knows the subject and the experts. Thus, although two different people may make a recommendation or venture an opinion, the known source will always win out over the newbie because of the name recognition and credibility of the veteran. Eventually, through hard work, networking, and persistence, a talented social media user will earn that cred. It’s just not reasonable to expect it overnight.

Everyone has the right to express an opinion and sometimes we overlook good ideas because they don’t seem to come from a credible source.  I fully expect that Darren Rowse’s opinions on professional blogging and digital photography will have more weight than mine, as will Louis Gray’s on tech startups and major league baseball, and Robert Scoble’s on video, interviewing, and a bunch of other things.

At the same time, I could probably speak more authoritatively on midrange systems, ERP applications, comic books, science fiction, and poutine than any of these three.

So, yeah, authority does play a big part in your recommendation.

What do you think?

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