The new cult

Blogging is a faith that drives a cult. A cult that may lead to the truth. So says Jason Calacanis talking about colaborative consumer journalism, where a small pebble can gather enough momentum to cause an avalanche. A journalist may never have the time and the resources to follow the small stories, they are in a business. They have to make money for the media owners. But bloggers aren’t always in it for the money. they like the truth and don’t necessarily want to prostitute themselves. A quick survey of the audience seemed to say that most people are not making money from the blog (but more make money from something that happened because of their blog.)

Do blogs have a better history of the truth – they may have a better process to get tothe truth, if corrections are open (instead of buried in a small paragraph in the back of the paper when the original story was on the front page. A well read blog will get corrections from its readers in a very real-time manner. And updates and rewrites can be made in the same timeframe.

A further point being made about RSS feeds and how they can be used to steal content. This could drive to people to turning off the full feeds – especially if other people are making money by putting ads on the blogs that contains stolen content.

A final comment was about getting ‘ratings’ for commenters and bloggers, so you can build up the trust system. Over longer term, assessment can be made about contributors value.