socialmedian: Where’s the gang of 2,000 who controls tech hype hanging out today?

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Where’s the gang of 2,000 who controls tech hype hanging out today?

Source: Scobleizer

Aug 22, 2009

Summary

So, the other day when I signed onto FourSquare for the first time in a while I found 442 people waiting for me. As I looked through the names I saw the same names that had first added me onto Twitter. And Dopplr. And Google Reader. And Facebook. And FriendFeed. And others.

You see, there’s a gang of about 2,000 people who really control tech industry hype and play a major role in deciding which services get mainstream hype (this gang was all on Twitter by early 2007 — long before Oprah and Ashton and all the other mainstream celebrities, brands, and journalists showed up). I have not seen any startup succeed without getting most of these folks involved. Yes, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch is the parade leader, but he hardly controls this list. Dave Winer proved that by launching Bit.ly by showing it first to Marshall Kirkpatrick and Bit.ly raced through this list.

By the way, having this list use your service does NOT guarantee market success. This list has all added me on Dopplr, for instance, but Dopplr has NOT broken out of this small, geeky crowd. Studying w

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Comments (2)

Mitchellmckenna,

Aug 23, 2009

Do you use Dopplr or TripIt? TripIt has a smarter system, but Dopplr has better social features. TripIt has the LinkedIn app, but Dopplr has the Facebook app.