Slushpile Links: Mob Rule, Mapping the Blogosphere & Four Funnies

Hi folks -- here are a few of the items aging out of my blog slushpile, the list of links that I might potentially blog about:

* "Beware Mob Media" [via Metafilter]: InfoWorld columnist Ephraim Schwartz warns that, "For all its good intents, citizen journalism is a form of fascism waiting to happen."

That's a pretty strong lead-in, don't you think?

Schwartz warns that hyperlocal and citizen journalism sites could lead to a kind of hyper-busybodyism, leading to an informer-culture where neighbors denounce each other, leading to witch hunts and mob rule.

While I'm not a utopian when it comes to the "wisdom of crowds", this particular fear seems pretty overblown. Wacky, in fact.

Developing and maintaining communities is not an easy thing, and I hope to talk more about it in the future, but it seems to me that Mr. Schwartz doesn't really get it.

However, I do get a kick out of the way how he (intentionally or not) co-opts the term "thought leaders" and makes it into something sinister.

While there are good, cautionary tales to be told about citizen journalism or social media, I don't think this is one of them.

* Mapping the Blogosphere: Discover has yet another map of the blogosphere, visualizing some of the link relationships in the blogosphere, and highlighting a few particular clusters, like political blogs, porn blogs, LiveJournal bloggers, the sports blogosphere, and of course, Boing-Boing (home of gadget and Disney love, anti-DRM screeds, and drawn-out jokes about "long horses")

The map is color-coded -- green lines are one-way links, and blue lines are two-way links (you link to me, I link back to you). It's based on the work of Matt Hurst (whom I've actually met a few times) -- check out his blog entry on the article and some of the accompanying galleries.

* Four Comedy Video Sites: Industry gossip blog ValleyWag compared 4 comedy video sites that highlight both professionally-created and user-generated comedy videos. (The review page is clean, though some of the linked sites may not be agreeable to your sense of humor.)

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: slushpile, citizen journalism