If anything sums up the conflicted state of the blogosphere when it comes to startups and Web 2.0 and so on – the fact that the same people who write blogs about cool startups are often people who are involved in other startups, which are then blogged by others, and so on – it is the links that have populated tech.memeorandum.com for most of today (click here for a screencap). Although their positions have shifted around during the day, they are all about Mike Arrington – but from two different vantage points. Some are about his great party (which was held for Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book Naked Conversations) and others are about Edgeio.com, his startup.
They do have one thing in common though – apart from being about Mike. And that is, they are almost all raves. The posts about the party are raves (even, surprisingly, some from people who couldn’t make it), and the ones about Edgeio.com are almost all raves as well, although to be fair there are a few questions thrown in here and there. But Dan Farber’s post, as my old sparring partner Scott Karp notes, sums up the tone of breathless enthusiasm: it is entitled “TechCrunch leads Silicon Valley Web renaissance.”
Now, Mike seems like a nice guy. And so do The Scobelizer and lots of the rest who were at the party, and many who wrote about Edgeio and the invitation-only previews they got. Mike has also been pretty good about declaring his conflicts, especially after the whole FON brouhaha. But that isn’t really the point. The point is that at the moment the lines can get pretty blurry in the old blogosphere, especially for those in Silly-con Valley – and no, I don’t feel that way just because I don’t get invited to Mike’s parties (and am too far away to go anyway). I think it’s a lingering problem people will have to confront in one way or another if Web 2.0 is going to get ahead in the credibility game.