Fear the Noise

Steve Rubel points to the noise on blogging from a UPS marketing executive:

...What concerns me about blogs is the signal to noise ratio -- do we really need all these niche, special-interest blogs, or will it become increasingly difficult to find relevance amidst the seas of personal web journals (or diatribes) without much to offer the broader constituency?"

Steve turns fear into greed, as this is an opportunity for FedEx. But the noise about noise is overhyped. Signal and noise gets distributed evenly in blogspace. Noisy blogs go unlinked.

The counter-signal is smart keyword searches that go unmediated through link-based authority mechanisms. These create false signals for brand monitors. They don't impact PageRank and networks of commerce.

(oye, I'm blogging about blogging, must be making up for a low signal and noise week)