I'm fascinated by Google's Hot Trends. I don't have a chance to follow it much during the day, but I keep it open in a tab when I'm online at home at night and occasionally refresh and it's amazing just how closely search traffic follows what's happening on TV.
News flash: people are watching the convention. And Dennis Rodman's going to be on this season's Celebrity Apprentice. Also, I had no idea what slippery kittens was, or why it would end up in the top 20 hot search terms for tonight, but a quick clickthrough led to the exciting news that they were on America's Got Talent tonight. Good for them! I guess.
Excellent ... I was running out of things to be anxious about, but I guess I can add nitroaniline to my list.
I thought your comment on Matt Haughey's blog was very insightful. The evolution of blogs (and the modern proliferation of information and the subsequent evolution of information-gathering in general) has been a subject of much interest for me. Indeed, how did I find you? Through a comment in another blog linked to in a Twine, which was delivered in digest format to my e-mail inbox.
Have you heard of Metcalfe's law? It states that "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system". We may yearn for the intimacy and the wholesomeness of small communities, managing demand by adding a "barrier to entry" or other logical economic device for controlling demand ... but what is the net gain? (No pun intended.) The internet rewards the free flow of information. Think of subscriber-based Consumer Reports or Angie's List, versus the free consumer information available in Amazon or CNET product reviews.
So let us continue to blog, or at least evangelize the free flow of information, that we may advance the community, increase our collective intelligence, raise the bar for discussion, promote awareness. Who knows what we can achieve?
Posted by: Charlie | Aug 31, 2008 at 09:40 AM