The A-List Is Dead, Long Live The A-List

Jim Kukral is trying to thread together a few data points, and looking for a smooth curve, but I don't think he'll find one. Kukral thesis? Because Robert Scoble can walk along the Apple store line livestreaming on Qik while chatting up a dispirited and apparently unresponsive crowd of early adopters, and because Jason Calacanis has declared he is giving up blogging, then somehow the A-List is dead.

Let me take this apart.

1. The new iPhone is not really early adopters. That was last year. This is the people that waited for it to drop in price, for all the kinks to be worked out (which wasn't the case on Friday, but oh well), and not the bleeding edge types. Also, maybe Scoble's star is falling.
2. The Calacanis blogicide is being done with the hucksterish hoopla that I've come to expect from Jason, who has an outsized PT Barnum personality. He's giving up blogging to write -- get this -- an email newsletter. His motivation is to get down to something more like social scale, and to move away from feeding the blog beast day in and day out. Basically, after five years, he's burned out on the medium. Fine, take a vacation. Mostly he's beening flogging Mahalo, rather than contributing new insight to the world's challenges (no offense, Jason).

Kukral goes off on a tangent:

[...]

Are you catching my drift? The thing we like to call “the a-list” is fading away. In fact, I think it might be already dead. Guys like Scoble and Winer and Calacanis and Arrington, and the rest, well, someone stole their mojo and they’re trying really hard to get it back by grasping at straws by trying to build the hugest Friendfeed list, for example.

But they’re not going to be able to get it back, even with a biggest list of subscribers. Their mojo has been stolen.

The a-list, if you ever believed there was such a thing (there was), is dying. No, let me clarify, it’s dead. It’s been eliminated. Not because those are bad people or they did anything wrong…

But because it’s just not needed anymore.

[...]

So why did the a-list die?

I’m sure you’ve got your own reasons. I don’t presume to have the right answers, but I have opinions. Here are some.

1. The a-list died because of social networking tools. It used to be that connecting with thousands of people could only be done if you had massive reach like an a-lister. However, with tools like Friendfeed and Twitter, anyone can reach out and “friend” up with anyone, causing millions of new connections of regular people.
2. The a-list died because the sharing of information became easier to do. In the past, the a-list was in charge of spreading the virus, but today is no longer needed, we can do it ourselves.

3. The a-list died because we used to have to rely on them to innovate and guide us to the new things. But we don’t need that anymore. We’ve reached a point where we have the knowledge and the tools to try things ourselves.

4. The a-list died because we’re tired of them and their incessant drama and posturing for attention. We all just decided enough was enough and called bullshit. It was bound to happen.

5. The a-list died because guys like Loren Feldman exposed them and made them just regular. You may or may not like Loren or his shtick, but there’s no denying he was a big part of satirizing them and bringing them crashing down to the ground.

It’s over. The revolution happened overnight and we didn’t even know it. We’re all now in charge, together, as one big group collective.

The a-list is dead.

Yes, Jim, the social revolution is moving forward, and it is changing a lot of things. We have new tools that are changing the way we work, communicate, and even the way we think to a limited extent. The technology underlying blogging hasn't really kept up (in fact, I am working on a new presentation entitled Better Media Plumbing For The Social Web that I will be presenting in Berlin, at the Web 2.0 Expo there), and much of what has made blogging social -- comment-based conversation -- is moving from blogs and into social contexts where the flow is faster, like Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, and Feedly.

But even as blogs have lost their preeminence, don't believe for a second that the power laws are going away, that human sociality will shift from the unequal distribution of popularity and authority. Even if we move into smaller, less massive social systems -- the tens or hundreds of thousands of Twitter users, for example, instead of the tens or hundreds of millions of blog readers -- the same distribution of popularity, authority, and influence will arise. It's an inevitable consequence of the wiring in our brains: the way that we perceive the world is based on the deep structure of our social mind.

The shift from Web 1.0 era social media to Web 2.0 social tools will not change human nature. It's like taking a high school's student body from their campus and putting them in a summer camp: the same social patterns emerge, just in a different cafeteria. We aren't changing the roots of our sociality, we are just rearranging the furniture.

Different folks may rise in our regard in new contexts, like @pistachio or @megfowler on Twitter, but it will happen with the same dynamics as in every other social space.

So, Jim, the A-List will never die, although new stars and new social contexts will arise.

Comments

[Dennis McDonald]

Part of what you are saying is that the concept of "celebrity" will always be with us. True. Sometimes celebrities hold onto our attention, while others fade from view. I may have expanded my own media involvement to include Twitter and Friendfeed, and I may have reduced my blogging output, but I'm also not following celebrities like Scoble any more since I find other sources to be more interesting and stimulating. Some celebrities in the social media space still hold my interest though, especially those who do not approach social media from a broadcasting perspective.

[ppmartin]

Fully agree with you, Stowe: it is more a question of general crowd behavior than one of "tools & plumbing".

[Cesar H Castro Jr]

Isn't this just a "pecking order" the law of nature. Someone else will always come to replace you, its just a matter of time. You can either fight it to the death or step to the side and nourish it. Look at John Battelle who was/is an a-lister in new media who has been running Federated Media Publishing for some time and who I would say the PuppetMaster behind some of todays A-List.

There will always be an A-list, its just the names on it who will change.

[Kyle Bunch]

Stowe--

Just posted on all of this, and think I came to many of the same conclusions you did here:
http://kylebunch.com/2008/tech/on-blogging-in-2008-or-the-sky-is-not-falling-people/

Thanks for re-affirming my long-winded thoughts on the matter ;)

-k

[david cushman]

Isn't the point simply that everyone is A list for somebody now?
Some people are on more peoples A-lists than others (and in more contexts); Those that are most relevant to most people.
Perhaps to be A-list for big numbers requires you to be more generalist, more broad... more, er, mass media?

[Jaap Stronks]

Yikes! Sorry for the length of this comment:

I don't think Jim is saying that those power laws are going away. But those laws are flexible, just as human nature is to a certain extent.

We can just as easily assign authority to a relatively abstract entity such as a newspaper instead of a human being (which would be more 'natural'), if technical and economical limitations force us to do so, because a single human voice cannot reach a sizable audience on its own - we devise a redactional formula with a brand, throw in a bunch of people (editors, writers, columnists) whose respective reputations are of less importance than the overall brand - the Newspaper.

Ironically, the newspaper proves that assigning authority and reputation solely to individuals has its limitations. But the newspaper model is limited as well: there are only so many newspapers you can read, and the need for protecting the integrity and consistency of the formula makes it a difficult stage to get access to.

The blogosphere isnt' really that much different. Even if you use an RSS-reader, you can only subscribe to so many feeds. If you don't, there are even less websites you can keep up with by regular browsing. No wonder an A-list is created, and the A-listers feel a big pressure to behave in the ways that are necessary to protect their A status.

The rise of new social tools promise to level the playing field in a bigger way than blogging has done. It's hard to do, because once you're big, you want to stay big - which is why the same sites are always on the Digg frontpage, for instance.

But the big fish only stay big because we keep feeding them. And it's pretty simple: we keep feeding them because our fish bowl isn't very big. But when attention is no longer primarily assigned to formal organisations (such as newspapers) or individual bloggers, our fish bowl does get bigger. I know I shouldn't stretch metaphors, but: some of my fish can more easily swim to other bowls, and other fish can swim to mine. Even if I get to keep my favorite fish because they're my friends and I trust them.

"the same distribution of popularity, authority, and influence will arise" - really? I don't think so. It will be unequal and everything, since that *is* human nature. But every house decorator can tell you that rearranging the furniture may have a great effect
on behaviour and, possibly, on social relations.

[Stowe Boyd]

Dennis - It's difficult to determine whether you (and others) are following celebrities less, oor just following the current crop of celebrities less. I believe new celebrities are being created all the time.

David - Yes, we are moving to the edge, where we have personal relationships with people that matter to us. Some are still more popular than others, some are superconnectors who bridge different worlds. There is an inherent inequality in our connecting, so whenever we concoct lists, or tools that rate and rank people's popularity and authority, we will find a powerlaw distribution. Each individual has their own ordering, and these can be wildly different. But when aggregated -- even if aggregated in a mass way that has little bearing on any particular niche -- an a-list will appear. 2-5% of the group will be responsible for 90% of the buzz.

Jaap - I agree with you in most points. It is *our* actions, as individuals that collectively lead to a-listers. We are like fish in a school, moving in near synchrony to find food or avoid prey. The end result is a zeitgeist in which Arrignton and Calacanis gain great influence on the thinking of so many. Just consider this cascade of posts and comments, all because one guy decides to stop blogging. There must be a million people that drop out everyday with no one so much as noticing.

[Dwayne Phillips]

The A-List seems to be a type of celebrity. Remember when Henry Winkler was on top of the A-List? Some people on the A-List grow weary of being there while many people tire of the people on the A-List.

I see this as temperament. I read Jerry Pournelle's View. He has been out there for 20 or 30 years. I don't know if he was ever on the A-List, but he has and continues to be at it. That persistence appeals to some temperaments (like mine). The same goes for Jerry Weinberg and with some thought we could add a few other names.

I like Scoble's blog. It seems that some have tired of it. So?