Gordon Weakliem had an interesting comment on Malcolm Gladwell's book on Sam Ruby's blog:
...the phrase "[The Internet] dramatically speeds up the rate at which reputation spreads by word of mouth" seems to be a key.
I find this to be particularly true with the advent of blogging. I was speaking to a users group recently and Chris Sell's name came up, and the question was posed "how did he become so famous?" Some people had read his book, some had read his blog, and others had seen him speak. But the general consensus was, via word-of-mouth, that Chris was a good enough fellow. No doubt he has been mentioned in e-mails, quoted in USENET posts, and held up as an example of a highly competent developer and clever architect.
This begs the obvious question, if there was no Internet, how long would it have taken for a Chris Sells (or Don Box, or Clemens, or Sam Ruby, or Dare Obasanjo, or anyone in an obscure technical vertical as ours) to become "well known and thought of."
I don't think it can be underestimated how quickly word-of-mouth spreads on the Internet. It would be interesting to have a race between a rumor and a virus. The rumor would be propagated only by humans, and the virus competes programmatically. I suspect it would be pretty close.
Hosting By
How cool is this: With the new Google SMS service, you can do basic Google queries from any SMS-capable phone (which is darn near all of them) by sending text messages to 46645 (GOOGL). Results usually come within a minute, and are text-based only - no links or other craziness that could screw up an SMS. So far, you can get local business listings, product prices and comparisons, dictionary definitions, and more is planned soon (or already there and they just haven’t told us about it yet). So, for instance, enter something like “Starbucks 10016” and you’ll get a response with nearest place to get burnt-tasting, overpriced coffee. Well, near us, anyway, unless you change the “10016.” Give it a go and let us know how it works for you. So far our results have been positive.
