Blogger or an Analyst, Who’s more Influential?

Jeff, thanks

I'll email Teresa to let he know about this.

The PEW research is over a year old, and I can't find the slide that was used in that preso. This is much better thanks

Jeremiah,

I love the term analyst and agree with the commenters who say that you can be A and B. I'd argue that A is an analyst and that B should get a blog. I lobbied to get my title changed to analyst because I thought it more accurately described what I do for my company and our clients.

As for studies that show rising trust in "people like me," I am not aware of the Pew study you talk about, but I can point you to (shameless plug for my company) Edelman's 2006 Trust Barometer that confirms that conclusion: http://www.edelman.com/image/insights/content/F...

Over the past few years the study has shown trust in traditional outlets (newspapers, TV, CEOs) dropping, and trust in average people rising.

Hey Jeremiah,
I'd love to see a link to that Pew study...

Thanks,
Teresa

Not intending to sound like a Forrester shill here (heck, I didn't even get a reply to my email!), but they do have more than Charlene out there now. She just had the first-mover advantage on the URL. They also have marketing and devices & media.

Jermiah tells me that I straddle the line between security blogger and security analyst. I've made contacts on both sides of the fence, and apparently I'm gravitating much more towards being an analyst myself.

I don't think there's a lot of difference between a good analyst and a good blogger. In both cases, the person behind the information has to build up a level of trust between himself and his audience. Heck, most of the analysts I know have now started blogging in addition to their own analysis work.

The primary difference is that analysts are backed by a business name people, usually company officers and other non-web people, trust. They can't take the time to read a blog and determine if they should really trust the blogger, but they're willing to take something Gartner puts out because most of what Gartner has put out in the past has been worth their reading. But now Gartner and other paper press analysts are 6 months to a year out of date by the time it's actually printed.

So non-Web 2.0 tend to trust the companies and their analysts. They've given up their own judgement to the editorial staff at Gartner. People who rely on bloggers want something that's more immediate from a specific person who's reputation they can track and influence.

Just my 2.0 cents worth.

Martin

oh yeah - redmonk blogs. we were early to the analysts as bloggers thing. the claim above that the forrester crew comes to mind is kind of odd, from my perspective, because asfaik, only charline's is not behind a firewall. at RedMonk we do full text RSS, free content all the time. We make money consulting. I have written about the new influencers a lot on my blog (thanks Steve!).

www.tecosystems.com
www.peopleoverprocess.com
www.monkchips.com

eg here is a piece on influence 2.0 (sic) http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/00154...

can't i be a and b?

"Are some bloggers analysts?"

Well, certainly some analysts are bloggers (the Forrester crew comes to mind first), but they're still analysts first. Is the distinction that bloggers don't need to sell to the companies they write about? Generalizing wildly, of course. :-)

Trust A. Don't trust B.
Or alternatively, trust C: any analyst who writes independently-minded content, shares it via blogs, and without being directly compromised by cash-for-comments style vendor projects.
If you want a discussion on the changing dynamic within the analyst community, try James Governor over at Redmonk.