Fame
: A very neat tipping-point observation from Nick Denton today:
Ken Layne and Matt Welch came yesterday to talk with the class I’m teaching at Berkeley journalism school. There, at the back of the room, the groupies, who had heard somehow that these two rock stars of the blog world were in town, and had snuck in to see their heroes in the flesh. I don’t think the students – most of whom have old media ambitions – quite understood the fame of Ken and Matt in the weblog world.
Nick also started the bidding in a new Google game: He found that Ken Layne is the hottest Ken online. Nick is the sixth Nick. Of course, I checked; what healthy ego wouldn’t? I’m top 20, which is OK, considering I’m a new kid on this block. I have to fight with a cartoonist, a Nascar driver, a dead recording star, and a TV comic. Besides, Jeff is a very common, very whitebread, very dull American name; there are too many of us.
