When the "A-List" stops being "The A-List"
So I was sitting at my local coffee shop this morning reading feeds, Twittering and writing. Not an unusual morning, but like other times a person gets inspired, it came from a comment from someone. This time from Jeremiah Owyang via Twitter. While talking about a the new Egos site created by Guy Kawasaki he Tweeted:
My recommendations to you: somewhere in the middle, develop your own feedreader of high value blogs and alerts everyone is unique
What occurred to me is that I didn’t think much about the a-list much any longer. While the semi-annual meme of beating on the a-list being a favorite sport for many bloggers, something any committed blogger will realize after awhile is that they develop their own a-list. This is simply the list of bloggers that they read and are influenced by.
It becomes less about the celebrity status of the blogger and more about the value of their content. I think it was Chris Brogan who started calling his personal list of favorites “Rockstars“, and it’s an apt title for a list of people who continually influence you on a daily basis. Hey I know good ‘ol Diamond Dave did that back in the ’80s for a heck of a lot of people. 
I’m sure a number of people are sitting back saying that I’ve missed the point of “The A-List”. They’d point out that this group of high-profile bloggers control the topics on Techmeme, Tailrank, et al. I don’t see that – I see a *lot* of great bloggers moving that conversation all over the place. At any rate, that’s not the point of this post. I’m really just talking about building your own list of blogs and bloggers that influence you.
Here are some opinions I’ve developed (though some are obvious )
- There is no one definition of the A-List – everyone’s a list is different
- “The A-List” everyone talks about are just bloggers – albeit with industry insight
- The more time you spend reading in the blogosphere, the more important the content and less the celebrity status of the blogger
- Your A-List will include high-profile bloggers, because of the value they bring to you, just like the lower-profile bloggers you read
I guess I just want to people to keep exploring and finding that content that has value to you. Don’t worry about if they are part of “The A-List”, there really are some great bloggers among them and many of their observations are relevant to the conversation that we’re looking for.
So, the A-List stops being “The A-List” when the reader realizes that each blogger brings value to the conversation and you start looking beyond who they are and more at what they say. What’s your take on this?
Photo credit: jzawodin
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Comment by Steven Hodson For sometime I have had a My A-List of Bloggers as a part of my sidebar area. Like you this is a ever changing list of bloggers; regardless of the Technorati ranking, that I consider to be the bloggers who influence me the most and provide me with some great reading on a regular basis.
It would be interesating if like Google Shared Feed that there was some way to amagamate that type of information – much like ReadBurner has done for Google Reader Shared Feeds. This way we could se across a broad spectrum who the real influencial bloggers are.
Comment by Louis Gray It’s easy to be idealist and hope that good content would float to the top. But it’s not 100% that way in regards to the A-list yet.
Looking at your shared items list right now, I see posts from TechCrunch, Mashable, CNET, Web Worker Daily (GigaOM Network) and one from Gearlog. The first 4 are definitely in the A-list for sure. We all may prefer content from other sources, but we all still read those sources. But if things can be fluid, then it’s possible other focused, intelligent writers can float to the top of the new rankings.
Comment by Chris Brogan... I should clarify: the “rockstars” on my page are self-defined. I didn’t add a single name. People add themselves to the list by pinging me with their URLs. : )
Meaning, it’s my community’s opinion who rocks. If you spend any time with the gang over at [chrisbrogan.com], in MY book, you’re a rockstar for contributing.
I was a solid C student. I’ll stick with that. : )
Comment by Rick Mahn Ann,
I’ve been hearing that same sentiment from several people now. That Twitter is replacing their feed reader. I too get most of my best lead/links from Twitter. The people are truly interesting and are motivated to share information and links. Great place. I too spend too much time in my reader, but like to go through the various feeds and share individual posts via Google Reader. I guess that’s why I still go through the effort!
Mathew, thank you!
Comment by Rick Mahn Louis,
Alright, I’m caught! But I didn’t say that I never read high-profile blogs. I do try to be selective when sharing posts, but do fall into the habit of simply sharing things that are solely of interest to me. I still need to work on that a bit. I do thank you for that feedback! 
Chris,
I do remember you mentioning that back when you started that page on your blog – somehow I forgot it since then. Sorry about misrepresenting that. The biggest thing I believe is that your efforts have helped people connect with more non-A-list bloggers than many others. Guess that’s the spirit that I was referring to.
Comment by Rick Mahn Steven,
Excellent idea about the Google Shared Feed. I think that information would be really interesting to have right in the reader on one page or another. Its interesting to keep finding new bloggers, I really have Kent Newsome to thank for that one with his “swivel feeds” experiment last year. I found several dozen new bloggers from that, most all outside the A-List.
Speaking of which, I really need to revist my list again – it’s already changed in the last two months. Again, with fewer A-Listers… but some excellent budding talent.
Regards,
Rick
Comment by Rick Mahn Louis,
Your comments on how the A-List still influences the discussion is quite true. After thinking a bit more on it, I do have to admit that a large number of them are in my feed reader. Though I don’t visit their sites often, I do scan their posts in the feeds nearly every day, sharing what may/may not be relevant. As such, with other bloggers like me sharing/talking about those topics, those high-profile sites do influence the conversation on multiple levels.
Maybe its just the beginning of change that I’m seeing and being excited by it. Requires more thought….
Regards,
Rick
Feck the A list….
)
There is an entire world out there that has no clue who any of the *Rockstars* of the business–or new media luminaries might be. What might be an A lister to some may not even be on the horizon for others. The real beauty in all of this is the ability to create a list that fits our needs that can be constantly added to..deleted from with a few clicks of a mouse.
For me? If the links not posted on Twitter, chances are I’m probably not going to read your blog post. Twitter has become my feedreader because of the people that I choose to surround myself with there. An interesting collection of geeks, freaks, friends and curtain wearers. I value their opinions of what might be relevant to my world, I’ve long since lost time to sit down and read blog posts for hours through a reader.