Agenda Setters 2007

Bloggers are now so influential that for the first time a growing number of them can count themselves among the Agenda Setters. Steve Ranger looks at the case for their inclusion.

This year one of the new groups of movers and shakers to claim a place for themselves in the Agenda Setters Top 50 has been the bloggers.

In case you've been living on Mars for the past couple of years, a blog - or weblog as they were called back in the day - is a regularly updated online journal, on the subject of pretty much anything. And there are as many of them as there are subjects or opinions - blog tracker Technorati estimates about 108 million.

Technorati calculates there are some 175,000 new blogs created every day, with 1.6 million posts per day - or over 18 updates a second. From Belle du Jour to Perez Hilton, bloggers are changing the way that web users get their news and opinions, forcing the more traditional media outlets to try to work out how they can change the ways they present and publish their news and comment in order to compete with these upstarts.

And while many bloggers are seen as having their own - often overt - agenda, they have also spotted and brought attention to stories that would have otherwise been ignored by the mainstream press. And in response the mainstream press has increasingly added blog-style content to its mix.

Of course not all these blogs are making an impact on the world - but a number of bloggers have reached such critical mass that they are being seen as agenda setters in their own right, building up in a few years readerships that many much older publications have taken decades to do. And it is perhaps unsurprising that one area this is happening is in the technology space, where the new form of publishing and content fit most neatly together.

"I think blogging's definitely got to the point where there're enough mainstream consumers watching it for the top ones to be regarded as agenda setters," argues Michael Smith, founder of Second Chance Tuesday and Agenda Setters panellist.

The panel identified some of the leading tech bloggers - including Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, at 35. He was described as having a "huge amount of power in the entrepreneurial and venture capital community" and "essentially having all the right early stage VC valley gossip".

Another blogger to make it into the Top 50 is Cory Doctorow at 41 who runs BoingBoing - according to Technorati, its most popular blog.

Panellist Ian Brown, research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, singled out BoingBoing as "very influential in the generation that's just coming into the tech industry".

Other bloggers to get a mention from the panellists include Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, Robert Scoble, Bruce Schneier and Guy Kawasaki.

One of the advantages that bloggers have is the ability to hold a conversation with their readers, and then incorporate their submissions. This is an important element of blogs such as BoingBoing and can give them an advantage over their paper rivals. Bloggers tend to be enthusiasts for their subject, which also means they can have the edge on their nine-to-five rivals.

And this isn't just an issue for consumers - companies are being urged to pay more attention to how they are represented by bloggers - and even think about getting CEOs involved.

That doesn't mean everyone needs to leap on the blogging bandwagon and for some blog fatigue has already set in - 50 per cent of respondents to a recent silicon.com reader poll said they don't think a business blog is a good way for companies to communicate with customers. So think before you leap in.