As previously noted. I think Peter is great. I subscribe to his feed. I read his blog. I follow him on twitter. I find him to be a great resource.

While on the whole, social media is not about thought leadership, do not people like Jason Calacanis, Scoble, etc. have a responsibility as so-called thought-leaders to provide, well thought-leadership? I’m legitimately asking the question. I get more out of David’s, Matt’s, Peters, and Joseph’s tweets than I do out of Jason’s, Pistachio’s, or Scoble’s. I’m actually really disappointed with their offerings. But, for every 115 tweets Jason offers about Mahalo, he then provides one great link…it’s what keeps me following him.

I hope my post didn’t come across as being critical of the contributions of people like Peter. Totally not my goal. If it did, my apologies. I was really trying to explain the correlation between the rise of twitter and the frequency and quality of blog posts.

I am so in to Twitter at the moment as a way of learning how to develop a community. But tomorrow, it could be that I am back to Delicious and FriendFeed. I don’t feel guilt about this at all!

From the other end, as long as those I follow continue to deliver their thoughts and ideas via whatever means – blogs or Twitter – then I feel content. If one of them is less good for a period, that is just fine with me.

As for Peter Kim. I have been collaborating with him over his list of companies using social media to market themselves. Both our blogs and Twitters have been crucial to that process. So social media is not just about thought-leadership. It is also about interaction whatever the medium.

So, Adam, I admire your posting enormously. I just think there are positives as well as negatives in the situation you describe.

This doesn’t mean they aren’t providing value. For some of my favorite bloggers, this is like MJ going form a 36 point per game scorer to a 32 point per game scorer. In scoring less he rebounded more and played better defense. If you will he became a better all around contributor.

The same could be said for all the people I referenced. Matt Dickman provides a tremendous amount of value on twitter and his blog. I learned about the umbrella site via his blog. His contribution on understanding Facebook’s audience was amazing. The writing of that guide took far more time than the actual blog post. The quality came in the work he compiled, not the post itself. Well for me it did.

I’ve enjoyed your visual expression feed on Flickr. You do a great job of sharing. As I look at blogging vs. tweeting one of the prime reasons I think we need to reinvigorate blogging is that blogs are now trusted/approved sources of data to reference. I’ve often pointed to posts from you, Kevin Rose, Avinash, etc. and been able to use them as reference points with clients. Tweets, because our how niche twitter still is, are much more difficult to justify as a credible source of information. That will change over time.

Interesting observation. Some might agree and others disagree. But Twitter may not be a sole factor. Many of us have gotten spread thin through commitments and travel that it’s hard to keep up frequency. As for quality, I’m still blogging for myself as much as the community, so one of the ways I measure quality is through the visual thinking I’ve done. I’ve had some really good ones over the last year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7855449@N02/sets/72157606844282993/

Thanks for a post like this though as it’s a reminder that people are watching and they go where the value is.