Mylermedia

Everyone wants to be heard — even if it’s just for being noted as the guy who noticed something first.

This is most true with regard to the flurry of the “rise to the top” type of web sites that has people submitting their internet finds — ususally news and quirky stuff — with the hopes of being “first” to do so, and the cause for a pile-on of endorsement and comment from fellow internet geeks.

These sites are a cross between social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication. It’s power to the people, somewhat, in a decentralized attempt at democratic editorial control. Except of course, there is no true control here, since it’s the voice of the masses (read: prolific internet users, not every day Joes) who, for some reason, we’re now supposed to give cred.

I’m still not sure who actually benefits from these types of sites. Just because you’ve noticed a meme doesn’t mean you’re cool. And just because a news story rises to the top doesn’t mean it’s really important.

The first movers in this space were Slashdot and Fark. Who really cares about what’s going on with them nowadays?

Now, there seems to be a new addition to the space every day. To name a few of the more popular sites that people are ranking trends and “news” include: Digg, del.icio.us, reddit (recently purchaed by Wired), Newsvine, and fresh on my radar screen, Clipmarks which I’m still trying to figure out.

Jeff Jarvis and Craig Newmark, news and community pioneers in their own right, have been working on a platform for the distribution of news for a long time now and it seems as though the cat will soon be let out of the bag. It’s (currently) called Day Life… and whether it’ll be just another decentralized platform for the distribution of news (real, user generated, or other) remains unknown.

See, there are a lot of boats out there in the same space hoping for a rising tide. But there’s still the chance the low tide (or a Tsunami) will come first. There are only so many places people people will turn to learn what’s new in their world, and I hate to break it to you, TV and MSM still rule the day.

And lest we forget: most folks still revel in sharing news of the day at dinner time, face-to-face.

Now, would you please pass the butter — and did you hear what happened to . . .