Meet the highly evolved community of 'A-listers' with growing influence over the tech agenda. They show how radically power can shift in the age of the Internet.
Dit is de intro van het verhaal van Steven Levy over de A List Bloggers (zeer invloedrijke en veel gelezen bloggers). Een paar quotes:

By dint of reputation, novelty and charm, certain "alpha bloggers" have built large and influential audiences.

The lesson is that there's a new force—spearheaded by people who work for no bosses and whose prose never sees an editor's pencil—that provides the water-cooler fodder for the larger high-tech community.

And the significance of this phenomenon has some important implications for the way opinions will be formed in the decentralized world of Internet media.

Other people, by a combination of writing skills, unyielding curiosity, canny instinct and lots of sweat equity, rise up from total obscurity to join the big dogs in the community. This happens when an A-lister notices a newbie's work and links to it. In those cases fame can come fast. Just ask Robert Scoble, an unknown when his items were first picked up by the alphas. "Within two weeks I was invited to Steve Wozniak's Super Bowl party," he says.

But don't expect the alphas to become the establishment. Before that happens, the unwashed blogging hoi polloi will shame the A-listers back into maverickville—or take their places. "People come out of nowhere and get discovered," says Scoble. "Suddenly they have 4,000 readers a day." Who will be the one who discovers what comes next after podcasting?

» Lees het volledige verhaal op MSNBC: The Alpha Bloggers