LongTailJewel, SecondOpinion and NewTailBlog – Affermative Action in the Blogosphere

I see my friend, JP, over on Confused of Calcutta, has picked up on the idea of bringing some equality to the blogosphere by highlighting lesser known bloggers and tagging the post newtailblog.

This is right along the lines of what Mike and I picked up on and were discussing back in February through a conversation in our blogs that we termed at the time longtailjewel. Kent Newsome also joined the conversation and called it second opinion along with Mathew Ingram, who actually picked up on the idea of Kents and featured me and my blogs as the one he linked to.

The idea Mike and I had of ‘jewels in the longtail’ and going hunting for them was about finding the social end of the longtail and is encapsulated by the thought that we wanted to ensure ‘every voice has at least one listener‘. We also spoke about it on a couple of podcasts Mike and I did while I was laid up with a broken shoulder.

I had some discussion over the concept of equality in the blogosphere with Hugh from GapingVoid. The equality argument came out of Clay Shirky and the quoted Skirky’s law of ‘equality, fairness, opportunity-pick 2’, which says basically that in the blogosphere you can have only 2 of those 3 attributes. In a post I wrote titled ‘Pick a card, any two’, I stated that “if opportunity means something like fame, (or goggle juice) in the blogsosphere, then Mike and I pick equality and fairness as our two”.

At the time, Doc Searles picked up on this idea in a post called affirmative traction.

Its great to see someone like JP getting behind the concept of making the blogosphere a more inclusive place for people and taking some affirmative action.

“Connections happen when stories overlap” is what I say – I love this kind of story overlap. And I love the idea of more connections happenning by including more people’s stories.

Below are some links to discussions I have previously blogged about or refered to around this issue.

Equality on the blogosphere – no gaping voids.
Mike’s take on our LongTailJewels discussions
Jewels i the longtail – image
Pick a card, any two!
‘inequality kerfuffle‘ by Hugh
Doc Searles giving recognition of affermative action (traction)
Kent Newsome’s SecondOpinion Proposal
Blobcast #5 – Horizontal HQ Sessions #2.
Mike (Learndog) and Dave (Lifekludger) chat about stuff they’re thinking about. This session is about the social end of the LongTail, Ensuring every voice has at least one listener, connection, inclusion, digging for the jewels in the LongTail and how to get a discussion going in the blogosphere.
Blob 6 – Horizontal HQ Sessions #3 – Pick Two Cards.
Mike (Learndog) and Dave (Lifekludger) chat about stuff they’re thinking about. This session is a short one mostly explaining and expanding on a post of Mikes on the Learndog blog. We pick ‘equality and fairness’ as our two cards, talk about finding meaning not just traffic and what it takes for newcomers to get ‘traction in the blogosphere.
Mathew Inram’s second opinion on me
Does a Second Opinion = Affermative Traction

Jewels in the Longtail – technorati tag
SecondOpinion – technorati tag
NewTailBlog – techorati tag