And neither of them are mine sadly! Stowe Boyd has posted two posts on /Message about two aspects of blogging, and I have to say I pretty much agree with both of them:

The A-list is dead: Long live the A-list. Covering the idea that the possible falling star of Robert Scoble and the retirement of Jason Calcanis from blogging does not mean there is an end to an A-list, or the short head of the long tail.

David Appell is Andrew Keen Jr: Covering the idea that blogs are worthless because they’re not written by specialist experts after months of research.

And I totally agree. I keep coming back to the idea that Chris Anderson made explicit in The Long Tail. It’s an AND change, not an OR change. The retirement of one prominent blogger, or the fall in buzz around blogging, does not mean that there will not continue to be some individuals or groups who will dominate the space. Either the names will change on the A-list, or the location of the fame may change e.g. Twitter or Seesmic, for example. After all, tech and social media bloggers always refer to traditional brands needing to evolve and stop relying on the reputation they built up by broadcast mechanisms before the internet – and yet we expect the popularity of prominent bloggers – and blogging, to be set in stone?

And the A-list will continue to change. Emarketer recently measured over half of U.S. internet users reading blogs – if it’s true, it’s a big number. But it’s going to keep growing by huge amounts – especially if you imagine the global growth possible from 50% upwards.

There will always be value found in blogs, and many of them will get that value by linking to an A-list. What is going to change is the names on the list – and if they’re located on a blog, microblog, video or alternative platform.