Understanding the blogosphere (Techlearning blog)

David Sifry is the co-founder of Technorati, the best blog search tool I have used to date. About a year ago BusinessWeek published an interview with David, and he talked about the nature of information in the blogosphere and the interactions happening here, as well as his company and business vision. I heartily agree with his view that the blogosphere is about conversations, and one of the key tools we need are feed rivers that help us navigate these channels of dynamic information and dialog:

What Technorati is trying to do is looking at the Web in a different way. And the way that I like to think of it is, it's like this big river, it's like this conversation flow. It's about people and conversations.

David seems to understand issues of content control through a dynamist-oriented approach to ideas, culture and business. In this interview, he also said:

Hey we're a Web site, [but] we also have to be providing some real value to people, because that's what being of service is really about. And that doesn't mean controlling or owning, because when you're of service, you're supporting. If you're providing people with something that they like and that they value, with that value comes money.

Via Gary Price.

Check out David's blog for more current ideas he is reflecting on and sharing. His post from April, "State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth" is AMAZING. He has some great, up to date statistics and graphs of the growth of the blogosphere and the permanency of people's participation here. I'll be using some of this in my presentations next week in College Station, Texas.