Chatting with Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing
Posted February 13th, 2007 by admin
Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing did a live podcast interview at Waxxi yesterday where listeners can phone in and participate. I called into the toll free number and logged in as a guest in Waxxi’s site and boom – I was part of the conversation.
I was able to interact with other listeners through the gabbly live chat feature and managed to get Cory’s thoughts regarding the growth of digital media. See below for my questions and a summary of his answers from my notes:
Why do you think BoingBoing is so popular?
• Boingboing editors have good taste and share only things that they truly think are neat, cool and interesting.
• We are very explicit with our headlines/summary. Readers will know right away what to expect when they read the headlines. (E.g.: don’t write “Interesting things”—not explicit enough.
• Power-link law (someone please correct me if I am wrong). Sites will grow in popularity as they link to more sites and in return receive more inbound links
• History: Boingboing has been around for a long time and has built a certain amount of credibility and that’s why people keep coming back.
Do you think online blogs and other digital media will take over traditional media outlets?
Cory does not think that digital media will totally take over the role of traditional outlets like print and television but the roles and importance will shift. People will start to realize that certain messages and topics can be better discussed because convenience and accessibility of the medium. (Example, trackbacks and comments allows people to discuss the topics, rather than just limited to only reading them)
