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Meritocracy of Ideas OR the Persona Quotient?

Aug 24th, 2007
by Lou Paglia.

I was looking back at Stephen Johnston’s post about mobility in the enterprise.  (See my coverage from a few days ago).  I remember he referred to the "meritocracy of ideas than a hierarchy of job titles" in reference to the 2.0 paradigm and how people collaborate.  And this strikes a thought back on a discussion I recently had with co-workers regarding blogging.

A colleague inquired as to the primary reason why a person would start to read my blog (or start reading anyone’s blog for that matter).  Do they read because of the merit of one’s ideas?  Or do they read it because of "the Persona Quotient", or in other words, the perceived level of the writer’s background whether it be prior success, education, title or place of work.

It is an interesting question?  Do people read me for the context of what I say?  Or do they read me because my Persona Quotient is driven by my position at Dow Jones or former position at About.com.  Would I read blog.pmarca.com if it wasn’t written by a Netscape founder and successful serial entrepreneur?  Would I read A VC if it wasn’t written by the Managing Partner of two well-respected firms?  Both individuals have high Persona Quotients…

My instincts tell me yes, I still would.  I have a number of blogs I subscribe to based on the quality and insightfulness of their contributions.  That is the great thing about the b’sphere.  But I must admit I found them in many cases via the high Persona Quotients.

So, what is the driver of the real or perceived value?  The Meritocracy of the Ideas or the Persona Quotient?  Interested in your views…

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  • Guess the parallelism with your views is that you do in fact, on occasion, use the Persona Quotient and not necessarily always the meritocracy of the ideas. In fact, you build an additional view that you often will read or click to someones blog (i.e. idea) when you believe that they have no merit.
  • Lou, I certainly believe in the Meritocracy of Ideas; but I have no idea if I am a representative sample! There are two predominant ways I discover blog posts:

    - Through a Google search, which is usually highly specific. If the post turns out to be interesting as well as useful for my search, I then consider subscribing to it. (I think this is how my own blog was "discovered" by the Communications Department for the San Francisco Symphony, by the way; and that was enough to get me free tickets when they instituted a "Bloggers' Night" earlier in the summer!)
    - Through a pointer from another blog to which I have subscribed, usually because it provides a position that either supports or opposed a point the blogger is making.

    Note that neither of these has anything to do with a Persona Quotient. If I use the PQ at all, it is almost always negatively! Thus, to give an example close to your home, I tend to be skeptical about the musings of "Silicon Valley heros," so to speak, probably because I have already been (overly?) saturated with those musings by listening to them in panel discussions! The people I most WANT to read on the basis of personal reputation (on just about any topic) are writers I discovered through THE NEW YORK REVIEW; and they don't blog!
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