Stardust Global Ventures

I’ve been thinking a bit about influence and what that all means. Let me tell you what started this train of thought. I’ll try to keep it short.

Earlier I was looking at friendfeed and noticed one of Leo Laporte’s updates for his show and listed his guests. Most of you know I’ve been a Leo fan for many years. Leo invited me to visit his show and I went. Now I’ve told that story often enough I won’t go back into it, but what matters is that I am an original fangirl. I watched him on tech tv, listened to his radio show, have followed him from his early days in internet stardom to his growing empire today, and what struck me was that on his show one thing has remained constant. His guests are almost always the same. Oh sure he has a fairly large pool to draw from and he does switch it up when a new star hits the horizon, but it’s sort of like a green show. He recycles all his guests from year to year, other than those shiny new stars, like Ev or Biz.

The last couple of weeks twitter got a new feature called lists. We now have the ability to create lists where we get to categorize people where we want to see them or where we think they fit. Tonight Robert Scoble tweeted:

I agree. Not everyone should be in such a list. There are several reasons that’s the case but the most important one is because not everyone is a social media guru. However, if Robert wanted someone in his list to be there, that is certainly his business.

Still, this created yet more thoughts and I even tweeted back to Robert a couple of them: following up with: Which brings me to my basic thought processes and something that came to me all at once.

Robert Scoble is a nice enough guy. He is what most people would term fairly influential. So is Leo Laporte. Both nice enough guys who work pretty publicly and influence a lot of people and even get them to change their minds. What they aren’t is always right. They are human. They are fallible. They may have influence, what we see as clout, but when it comes to making a list the same people will be on their lists. The same people will be invited to their parties, and hang out with them at the bar in the *name a famous hotel* in Half Moon Bay or Petaluma. They both appear to be real people who really engage, but you and I both know there is a limit to that engagement. If you don’t live near them, don’t attend the same parties, don’t regularly socialize in the circles they socialize in you aren’t one of them and you won’t be on the massive insider list that only they have the ability to build and create influence with.

That’s a fact. Dispute it, disagree but it is what it is. We aren’t the insiders. We are regular people who may be every bit as intelligent as the people on those lists, but through whatever forces that be, aren’t as influential. I own it. Do you?

Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte, Sheryl Breuker