Comments on: Mark Cuban makes a great point

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 04:13:16 +0000

It’s linked. He can AFFORD to be personal, in many senses. You’re missing the aspect “Personal blogs don’t get read by almost anyone else unless the person writing them has something comparable to the attention aspects of traditional media”, hence the misleading comparison.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Sun, 14 May 2006 02:40:19 +0000

I disagree (but then you probably figured that out already). I think his argument does generalize, because I don’t see him arguing that anyone with a blog can somehow become as widely read or “powerful” — whatever that means — as he is. I see him as saying that blogs simply are more personal than traditional media, and therefore readers (however many there are) can form a more personal connection to a blogger than a member of the traditional media. And I think that is true.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 02:33:55 +0000

Yes, I understood both “already awarded” and asserted “hold for others” point – my underlying point is contesting the latter, his argument does not generalize. Rather, generalizing his success is another way of stating cliched blog triumphalism. He’s got’s power because he’s got power, and blogging gives very little unless one already has a lot (with some extremely rare exceptions).

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Sun, 14 May 2006 01:29:44 +0000

That’s a fair point as far as Mark Cuban is concerned, but then I already awarded you that point. But I think his argument holds for others as well, not just himself.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 01:09:51 +0000

Ah, but what is his point, when examined critically? It’s rather uninspiring for a multimillionaire to be proclaiming how great it is that he can run a PR apparatus so much more cheaply these days. What is elided in the phrasing about “person who writes and their readers”, is that there’s still a conduit between readers and writers, in his case that conduit is the huge attention he has, by virtue of his wealth and ownership of attention-generating asserts. Those are major factors in *getting* him readers.

So he likes ranting instead of being a grey flannet suit. So what? Thus his wealth and connections get him an audience – that’s not a triumph of blogs, it’s triumph of wealth and connections.

The fallacy arises because of a false comparison between what it would entail if he had to use someone else’s attention-network (a lot), versus what it costs him for incremental use *once he has gotten his own comparable attention-resources* (which represent an astonishing amount of bubble money).