Adam came up with a really interesting post about some A-List bloggers (Robert Scoble / Scobleizer, Dave Winer / Scripting.com and Steve Rubel / Micro Persuasion). He analyzed the content of their publications and tried to understand why people are reading them. This is not the first analyze done on the subject but it is an interesting one.
The main question is: “Why do people read these guys?”
“In fact I’d say they’re acting more like radio DJ’s (playing attractive mixes of someone else’s original content), rather than artists.”
“but for the most part, the A-listers in my industry are simple, useful link brokers”
If you take a look at his graphs, you can say that he could is right. However, I think that their success is a little more than this.
Why these guys become influent on the Blogsphere? I think that they are much more than just link brokers. I will give you a clue on why they are a little more than DJ’s with something that Adam said in his post:
“I do check in with these rockstar blogs occasionally and have even met several of them in person”
They are social; they easily connect with people; they have a whole lot of contacts. The result is that they have daily breaking news to broadcast and they take the time to comment and describe how they view them. Another factor is that when they write their comments on something, they do it in few lines: it gives the time to people to read them.
Adam pointed out another factor that I think is really important: they are passionate. This passion is transmitted by their writings. This passion is contagious and it is a factor why they easily connect with other people.
In conclusion, they are passionate people that master the art of socialization. I think that it is enough to try to explain why they can influence the way people see the Blogsphere and the Internet. I do not think that this is a question of blogging, but much more a question of social and human skills.