Testing 1 2 3 - Doc Searls are you there?

This is a test, a test to see if Doc Searls actually listens to the long tail, and to see how long it takes. Now, I'm not going to do anything other than post this message which mentions his name, the long tail, and a subject he's near and dear to... the A-list and Gatekeepers.

Note: Doc, see the bold text below if you read this.

Why? Well, I'm curious, more than anything else. Doc strikes me as a good guy, who happens to be towards the top of the "long tail" of blogging.

There's another reason for this post... to reply (without hyperlinking to it... yikes).. to his post of February 11th entitled "Offensive Post". See, Doc is in a bad spot. He's accused of being a gatekeeper, merely because he's an "A-lister"... which is a no-win proposition... but it's all the wrong question.

The blog-o-sphere, web 2.0, or whatever the heck you want to call this mess of cluetrain, blogging, RSS, Technorati, and all of it... is different than many other things because the tools make it equal opprotunity. (Don't whine about unequal results, that's a matter of working at it!) I'm writing this at 11:30 PM CST on February 11, 2006. I'm fairly certain that Doc Searls will see and read this posting, without hyperlinking to his site (which would kick off a trackback or referal log)... all because of the nature of feeds he reads.

Now, Doc's read and written to me in the past, but it's not a daily thing... so knowing my reputation might give it a bit of a boost.... but not much. (No delusions of grandure here)

It'll be interesting to see exactly how, and how long, it takes.

Why do I care? Why should you? Because, if Doc is typical of the way things are going, the A-list is going to matter less and less, just as the blogrolls are becoming old news. We'll keep some daily reads, but we'll be filtering on subjects instead of authority. This completely eliminates hierarchy and replaces it with taxonomy (or tags, or whatever you want to call it today).

Thanks for your time and attention.