Links are dead, right?

Steve Gillmor has the uncanny ability to proclaim a technology is dead, long before it's actually dead in the sense of not being used. But if it's going to be dead soon, it's dead now, goes the argument. I had fun being a fly on the wall at InfoWorld when he really upset IBM by proclaiming Notes is Dead.

His next big meme last year was "links are dead." And so it was memories of these stories that came flooding back when reading this piece lamenting the fact that the 2000 Bloggers project has killed the value of links forever. I guess Steve would argue they were already dead, so what's your point?

I've been thinking about this from another angle. I made my way over to Ad:Tech Sydney this morning to see MySpace's Shawn Gold and participate in a panel discussion on blogging. (Just as an aside, I got the official figures and there were 600 people in the room for the keynote -- that's big for Sydney. Australia's online community is going NUTS I tell you).

Shawn's take on the whole social networking thing is that people want their 15 minutes of fame (just like all the people on 2000 Bloggers who dream of being a so-called A-List personality, it would seem). Except with social networking, "everyone is famous for 15 people". Of course, most people are already famous for at least 15 people in the offline world, it's just now we have another way of creating fame online.

So can you blame people for jumping on the 2000 Bloggers bandwagon? No, people want fame. Should we have seen it coming? No, but who sees any of these things coming (apart from Steve)? So are links really dead now? The evidence is mounting, it would seem.

So the question is what comes next? Maybe we should start Blog Survivor and vote the A-list people off the proverbial digital island and start all over again. Anyone got a better idea?

Oh, and while you ponder that bit of inspiration, Vicorp has posted this promo-video from Ad:Tech which includes a Shawn Gold quote (and some shopping centre-style music I'm afraid). And here's Ross Dawson's post on the subjects covered during our blogging panel this afternoon. (Ok, that's the last link for the day, since they are supposed to be dead. :)

Update: Darren Rowse has a great overview of Ad:Tech day one here, and Andrew Pascoe's linked to a few bloggers at the show.

Comments

[Cameron Reilly]

haha that video background music is SO LAME. Couldn't concentrate on what anyone was saying I was ROFLing so much.

Any mention of podcasting at Ad:tech dude?

[Mark Jones]

Hey Cam. Nope, our panel was just about blogs. You can only cover so much ground in 1 hour...

[pascoe]

Yeah, the music is shocking. And the whole video is a bit heavy on the 'sell'...

Would be surprised if podcasting doesn't get mentioned at some point over the conference at another session (it seems to be the latest buzzword for creative agencies to use to appear with it)