Guy Brighton's written a succinct little post over at the excellent PSFK in which he makes stark contrasts between the speed at which new ideas get publicized in blogs and in mainstream media, in this case, the fashion publication, WGSN.
Here's the comment I left on the PSFK post:
PSFK vs WGSN is another great example of the "democratization of expertise" taking place on web 2.0...I read both, but for different reasons. PSFK when I want to find out what's happening right now...WGSN when I want to convince someone that something I told them months ago is really, finally!, starting to "happen."
Unfortunately, there are people who will not believe any ideas that do not appear in traditional media.
For them, valid = already widely believed.
I know the hyper-magnification of all things digital bit us in the butt five years ago, but the methods for triangulating the power, or validity, of new ideas today is far more well-developed than it was then.
Take podcasting. A year ago, those of us listening to Adam, Dave Winer, and Dawn and Drew knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was a big deal. As the months passed, bloggers picked up the trend and vetted it, putting it through the equivalent of the Betty Ford "de-hypification" program, and declared it sound. Even though momentum built, it wasn't until its adoption by mainstream iTunes months later that podcasting appeared on the media radar screen.
So, by watching sites like PSFK, and IF, its ritzier sibling, we can now get the early, early read on ideas, and follow them through the long tail of the adoption cycle, still long before the WGSNs of the world can take a chance running a feature about them.
For some of us today, valid = on the right trajectory.
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