KnowledgeForward

In interviewing for the open position on my team, I’ve had four conversations so far with people who were not applying immediately, but thought being an analyst sounded like a nice job and wanted to know how to position themselves for an analyst role in the future.  Here’s the advice I gave.

Of course, I first gave them a realistic view (warning?) of what the job entails.  When I first got an entry-level job as an analyst at Meta Group, I gave a good description of the job to one of my friends at the financial services firm I worked at previously.  She listened intently, nodded her head, and when I’d finished said “I’d rather have someone put a hot poker in my eye than do that job.”  It’s not what everyone would enjoy, and that’s fine.  I’d estimate there are only about 2,000-2,500 technology industry analysts in the U.S., so it’s pretty much a niche occupation.

Then, I described what I would (and did) do to position myself for an industry analyst position, whether it’s at Burton Group or any of the other technology research advisory firms as well.  I’m assuming here that you work in IT in a firm that uses (rather than sells) software.  It needs a few twists to be applied to people working at a vendor or consulting firm as well.  I’m also assuming you are not trying to get a “blank slate” analyst job (such as just out of college or total career change) since most analyst positions require experience.  There aren’t many intern or first-job analyst spots (at Burton Group it’s none - we require at least 5 years of experience for analyst hires, and the average on my team is actually about 15 years experience).

Start creating a portfolio of vendorless research positions

Analysts have to be unbiased towards any vendor, but if you’re coming from an enterprise or vendor you may have deep knowledge about the product you use (and specifically the capabilities that you’ve enabled) but none about the products and capabilities you don’t.  Rather than jumping into researching competing products, I’d first focus on creating frameworks, best practices, market segmentation, organizational structure recommendations, maturity models, and evaluation criteria that don’t even mention a vendor.  These exercise your capacity to think at a higher level of abstraction and then those frameworks can be applied across a slew of vendors using an analytical method of your creation rather than a self-serving one from each vendor.

Seek out speaking and writing opportunities

Depending on the analyst firm you go to, writing or presenting are a big part of the job.  Your current job may not require much in-depth writing or offer many chances for large presentations.  That’s when you have to take initiative to find opportunities, such as presenting case studies at a conference or speaking for local user groups or at universities. If someone really wanted a job with a lot of writing and speaking, wouldn’t you expect they’d have gone to extra effort to find writing and speaking opportunities for themselves in their current position?  For example, I had selected a special master’s thesis project (which wasn’t required) that involved developing a type of knowledge management and business intelligence methodology and wrote a paper on it.  I also proactively searched and found speaking opportunities at my two alma maters with professors I’d taken classes from.  These days it’s easy to set up a blog and start typing away.  Even if it doesn’t become a big hit, a potential employer can look at it for examples of writing skill, analysis, and long-term commitment to writing.

Get involved in some product evaluations

Try to line yourself up to be involved in some product evaluations.  The type of software doesn’t matter as much as the comprehensive analytical model you can demonstrate in making your selection.

Move into an R&D role

Many organizations have an internal group that researches new technologies and writes recommendations on if/how/when they should be applied to the business.  Both myself and another analyst on my team came from internal R&D groups (mine was called “advanced technology”) from within financial services and manufacturing companies.  These jobs are fun!  Plus they expose you to analysts, get you used to rapidly changing technologies, and providing opportunities for describing recommendations in writing and presentations.  An architecture team involved with product evaluations would be a good choice as well.

Read papers from the firms you’re interested in

Start learning their analytical style and applying it to your current projects.  Most of the firms have a rotating set of free research available on their sites or occasionally republish articles through partners. Burton Group’s free papers are here.

Determine which analyst firms are best for you based on what you like to do

Each analyst firm has a different mix of emphasis on quantitative research (like surveys), qualitative research (such as speaking with vendors and users, reading books/white papers, and searching), financial analysis, writing, presenting, advising clients, vendor consulting (marketing strategy), end user consulting (applying analytical and architectural frameworks), speaking to the press, and travel.  Ask yourself what you enjoy most and learn which firms emphasize those activities.

When interview time comes, do your research

Unlike applying for most internal positions, analyst firms, by nature, are easily findable.  As easy as it is to do a Google search there’s no excuse not to know what they cover, what positions they’ve been taking lately, and what kind of research they do.  An analyst is supposed to be a good researcher, so this is a good time to prove it.  Hint: all the analysts I know love to debate, so come in with an angle you think they’re missing or a position you think they’re wrong about and (gently) show you can find holes and defend a position.

I wanted to alert readers to an opening for an analyst on my team here at Burton Group in the Collaboration and Content Strategies service!  I’m open on location, but it does have to be in the U.S. (Alaska and Hawaii are fine as long as you’ll pay for us to visit you for team retreats!).  I enjoy working at Burton and you’d be joining a great team we’ve assembled here.  Let me know if you have any questions (my contact info is in the About page).

You can see the full posting on the Careers portion of the Burton Group website, but here’s a quick summary.

Analyst - CCS

The CCS Analyst is responsible for creating frameworks, research documents, presentations, and blog posts for Burton Group’s clientele. The Analyst will work with customers, vendors, industry leaders, and other Burton Group analysts.

Requirements:

• At least five years experience researching, writing and presenting in one or more of the following areas:
  • Architecture involving communication, collaboration, content management, or portal systems (including enterprise, logical, and/or physical architecture)
  • Collaboration and content management capabilities of major vendor platforms including Oracle, SAP, IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, Microsoft SharePoint
  • Enterprise content management (including document and imaging management, records management, search, web content management)
  • Enterprise e-mail systems
  • Information architecture (including taxonomies and ontologies)
  • Real-time communications (including instant messaging, presence, Web conferencing)
  • Office productivity tools including document formats (e.g., XML, PDF)

I just got back from a business trip last night to find that a storm had hit.  My house is fine, but my e-mail inbox is wrecked.  The storm was caused by a document recently published by the Burton Group called “What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications”.  A small minority of the comments address technical issues with the document, but the vast majority are mudslinging that call everything from our objectivity to our parental heritage into question.

This document was published in the Collaboration and Content Strategies service at Burton Group.  I am the manager of that service and the analysts (Guy Creese and Peter O’Kelly) that wrote the document are in CCS.  I stand behind the document, Guy and Peter, and Burton Group fully. 

In seeing this reaction to the document I am not entirely surprised.  My blog entry from September called Microsoft Loses Open XML Vote noted that much of the furor about the OOXML vs. ODF battle was not based on technical merit, but politics and techno-religion. That’s how it seems to have played out too.  It seems the majority of the negative comments in the blogosphere were written by people that haven’t read the report and are responding to a simple summary that they read somewhere.  Please folks - this report is free and available on the Burton Group website under “Free Research”. 

Microsoft had nothing to do with this document other than providing information and vendor review just like IBM, Sun, and others did.  If Microsoft was trying to buy or influence the writing of this document they would have to be pretty annoyed at how balanced it is.  Here is the entire conclusion of the document.  Does this sound like the fiery rhetoric of someone preaching for Microsoft?

The OpenDocument Format (ODF)/Office Open XML (OOXML) debate is part of a significant phase in the evolution of productivity application, with the shift to Extensible Markup Language (XML) file formats displacing traditional binary and proprietary file formats. The stakes are huge, with compelling new opportunities for content management, as well as both opportunities and challenges for software vendors. Organizations will gain important benefits by exploiting opportunities to improve information management and reduce vendor dependencies by shifting to XML file formats.

The articles on this debate like to pick up phrases from within the 37 page document or pro-OOXML recommendations (stripped of nuance of course), but they are doing a disservice to their readers.  Here’s the beginning of the analysis section.  The full doc has a lot more nuance and detail, but this gives the opening “attack”.  Is this a blustery, one-sided viewpoint? 

The recent industry debate about OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML) often comes down to the blunt question, “Which one will lead?” There are three answers. The first answer is, “It depends on who you are.” {description of applicability by industry given here … The second answer is, “Within the larger market, OOXML will lead,” for three reasons {the three reasons are detailed here} … The third answer is, “In the long run, perhaps neither.” {description of how OOXML and ODF may both be irrelevent as documents become more hypertext oriented}

Someone attacking our vendor independence pointed out a blog post I wrote about our SharePoint workshops.  This person seemed to believe that if we do workshops on SharePoint strategy we profit from SharePoint’s popularity and would therefore sell our soul to perpetuate it.  This isn’t a direct quote - this person was much less eloquent.  This assertion is flatly wrong.  Our workshop points out the flaws of SharePoint as well as the better parts.  It goes through the offerings of competing products from IBM, Oracle, Google, and more and points out where those products are better and where they are worse.  It points out that organizations have been unsuccessful with SharePoint and that if you fit the same profile, you might be better off with something else from another vendor.  If someone leaves that workshop deciding SharePoint isn’t for them, fine - I don’t lose a penny since we don’t do implementation and we offer the same objective advice about whatever other product they choose too.  And if SharePoint starts losing out in popularity to something like IBM’s Quickr/Connections products, then expect to see an IBM workshop from us that points out strategies, high points, and pitfalls there too. 

I have no trouble attacking SharePoint when it’s warranted.  One of the most popular documents I wrote when I was at Meta Group was called “Sharepoint: Why Not”. If anything, I’ve found Burton Group’s independence to be even higher.  We will not write a vendor document for hire (even for the vendor’s own internal use) or accept any money for a document we are writing.  We do present at vendor’s conferences (we are presenting at Lotusphere next week for example) and we do webinars and other events, but we give the same presentation we would at our own Catalyst conference. 

As stated by our vendor independence policy more than 80% of our customers are enterprise customers.  There are no catches hidden there (our split by revenue is approximately the same, we don’t count Microsoft as an enterprise customer, etc.).  We play to our base, and our base is large organizations and enterprises, not vendors. 

For more information, your first resource should be the document itself.  Go to the source and let us know where you agree or disagree.  If you want a summary of resources on the technologies themselves rather than the debate (good for you!) jump to the end of the report  and it links to information on the relevant standards.

• The document itself can be found here under CCS.
• Peter O’Kelly postings here and here
• Posting on our service blog by Guy Creese here

Those of you that have seen me present at a conference, met me and exchanged business cards, or looked at my bio know that my title is “Vice President and Service Director”. I’m not hung up on titles, but I want mine to be descriptive and from my vantage point this one fit the bill. “Vice President” referred to a high level of analyst and “Service Director” said I also run a team of analysts in a research group. Little did I know …

It’s come to my attention that my title often has different meanings in the industry (among other analyst or consulting firms) that causes me some grief. I recently had an e-mail exchange with the analyst relations representative at a vendor that kept trying to sidestep my interest to get at a teammate. For example, when I said “Mike and I would like a briefing” I got emails back saying “To clarify, will Mike be at the briefing?” “Should I call Mike directly?”. After a couple such exchanges I clarified that I actually am an analyst and she admitted “My apologies Craig, your title is a bit misleading”.

In another instance last year, my initial attempt to get press registration to a conference was denied and the approver there strongly implied I was probably administrative overhead:

I’d like to inform you that we do not generally provide VPs and Directors of firms with press passes unless they plan on writing and publishing an article regarding our event or one of our exhibitors. Reason being that press passes are reserved for journalists and analysts who still write and plan on covering our event … If you no longer cover this area or do not write (work mostly as a managing director) …

Apparently from what I’m told, “service director” at some other analyst firms often means a backoffice paper pusher of some type who occasionally tries to swing a free trip by posing as a real analyst. At other companies “services” refers to consulting services, so that title would be for a person that drums up sales for a consulting group. “Vice President” is a bit better, but other firms still use this to designate one as part of the memo monkey class.

So, yes, I am an analyst. I do research, write analyst reports, speak at conferences, do consulting, and give 1-on-1 advice to clients because, well, that’s what we analysts do. While that’s a full plate on its own, I also have a side plate with a serving of management on it. The management part lets me enjoy the hands-on ability to shape what the Collaboration and Content Strategies service does.

On one hand it’s kinda funny and I get past it by sending links and articles. But it’s annoying, extra work, and who knows how many other briefings I’m left out of or how often I wind up talking to lesser people in the organization because of this.

For PR people out there, I’d recommend a simple 2-minute exercise before possibly alientating anyone. 1) Go to the firm’s website and type the analyst’s name to see what content pops up. 2) In your favorite search engine, type “analyst name” “firm name” and see what kind of hits you get on press quotes, webinars, etc. 3) Type “analyst name” blog and, if they have one, see the topic map and then check their authority rating in your favorite blog rating engine.

A few weeks ago I wrote an entry about all the reasons I blog.  But one I apparently skipped was the idea of monetizing the blog later by turning it into a book.  One can make money directly by selling the resulting book (with the convenient market testing being done for free from commenters on the blog) or indirectly by self-publishing it to appear like an expert to future clients. I predict this will be a trend that grows over the next few years until there is a backlash at the number of quickie books published from blogs.  

One prominent example is Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame), who has just published Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice.  It’s worth noting that in the 11/2/07 WSJ he writes that he has gotten large amounts of flak for taking free material and trying to make money off it (especially once he deleted it from his blog archives).  That will probably be a common complaint, but it’s not a well founded one as anthologies of previously published material have existed for a long time and the fact that it is easy to get a hold of the old material shouldn’t make a difference.  At least you got to read the material for free for a while if you wanted to, which is better than an old fashioned anthology.

Another well-publicized example is Daniel Lyons with Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.  The popularity of his blog (one of my personal favorites) is likely to make this book a best seller.

But why wait for your favorite blogger to publish a book when you can publish your own blog yourself!  I did a search on “blog to book” and found some tools out there already.  Here’s a video: http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13568_22-154597.html that talked about a tool for doing this.  They call it “slurping” your blog entries. Yuk.

Give it another a few years for the amount of blogging to hit critical mass and then look for the tools and services that will automatically compile a first draft of a book from your blog postings, organized by category and ready for editing and sale on booksurge.com.  If Andy Rooney and Dave Barry could make money by re-selling their singular takes on life, why can’t everyone else? 

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this blog entry while you could.  Next week it’ll cost you $19.99.  Just kidding.

This blog may go dark for the rest of October as I head out to our Catalyst conference in Barcelona.  I look forward to getting to meet with lots of clients in a great venue.   If you’re going, I look forward to meeting with you there.  My blogging time may be comprimised while I’m there, but I’ll be back in November.

Congratulations to my teammates (#16,19, 54) and companywide coworkers (21,33,30,56,6 that placed in the Top 100 analyst blogs according to Technobabble 2.0.  Alas, I did not make the list this time around, but it did get me introspecting a bit about blogging now that I’ve been doing it for a year.  Part of me doesn’t care what my readership or rankings are, but another part of me does.  I’ve let each half of my brain write up its reasoning below:

Why I Don’t Care About My Blog Rankings

• I do this for personal fulfillment.  I enjoy the opportunity that a public journal offers me to share my thoughts.  And the process of assembling one’s thoughts is cathartic.  If someone finds it valuable too, that’s a bonus.  Accordingly, I do this for me first and trust my readership to self-select themselves rather than targeting readers and trying to write for them.
• The stats are not always accurate.  Bloggers (especially those whose rankings drop) frequently complain about time lag, distortions, and inaccuracies in the statistics.
• Quantity of readers doesn’t equal quality of readers.  A thoughtful reader or industry heavyweight may be worth much more than someone who doesn’t care about your topic and subscribed to it once on a whim.  When I see I had a large number of hits on my blog, but the details show it was a lot of clicks on a Dilbert cartoon I pasted in my excitement dims quickly.
• Quantity of readers doesn’t equal quality of authorship.  There is a perpetual debate in other realms of discretion about whether popularity indicates quality (e.g., Hollywood movies vs. indie films, Stag’s Leap cabernet vs. small batch unknowns, Norah Jones vs. jazz singers only known to aficionados).  There’s some correlation, but no guarantee.  And some topics garner disproportionate attention.
• The entries I write in my blog are just pre-work - a scratchpad of content that can be reused when I write reports at a future date.

Why I Care About My Blog Rankings

• It makes my professional life easier.  Regardless of the true value of the rankings, software vendors place some stock in them.  That means when you have an urgent question or want a timely (preferably before the public) briefing on something new, it will happen much quicker and easier if you are seen by them as relevant.  Some prospective clients are probably beginning to place value in them as well when it comes time to select where to spend their industry analysis budget.
• It feels good when your creative work is appreciated and encourages you to continue.  I have always felt this way about my other creative endeavors (music composition, woodworking, photography) and blogging is no different in that regard.
• I am a product of our culture.  I think very few people growing up in modern, Western society can feel free of the desire to excel above others and exhibit the outward manifestations of success.  I feel I’m usually pretty good about not letting this artificial measure of self-worth dominate my thoughts or actions, but when I do a thought experiment of whether I’d feel good if I had rated highly I admit I would have.  How do I know that validation through superfluous numerical rankings is prevalent in our society?  Because it was on The Simpsons!  As Lisa Simpson says when her school is closed due to a teacher’s strike in The PTA Disbands!  :

[Jumping up and down to get Marge's attention] Look at me! Grade me! Evaluate and rank me! I’m good, good, good and oh so smart! [drops to her knees] Grade meeeeee!!

In summary, I don’t see a dominant argument here.  I think we all simultaneously strive to be self-actualized people (whose internal drive and sense of self-worth precludes external validation) as well as social animals (whose worldview is shaped by others and who strive to be alpha members of the pack).  But if one side wins out over the other then, as a reader of this blog, you’ll be the first to know.

I posted earlier about the different types of articles one sees in the media about Second Life.

Of the 4 types I mentioned, it seems the negative drift seems to be in vogue lately. The CNet article “‘Second Life’ after the backlash” and the Wired article “How Madison Avenue is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life” follow the “negative” script I gave in my earlier posting pretty closely.

That could be why the Second Life community convention in Chicago last weekend said “We are not providing press passes free of charge. We will however be happy to help you be in contact with folks you may find of interest.”

Turning down press passes is not normal for a community that wants new members which exposure can bring. But given the negative press lately, it may be advisable to be safe and avoid a story that might pick a negative angle or interview the weirdest people the writer can find.

Being a research analyst, I read a lot of news. And since I cover just a few small areas of the galaxy we call IT, I often read views on the same topic over and over and over … . So with that in mind (and tongue planted firmly in cheek) I have decided to offer my assistance to journalists writing about Second Life.

So, what’s an intrepid journalist to do? You’re hip and feel an obligation to cover Second Life. You already wrote the “Second Life 101″ article back in 2006 - the one that breathlessly described what Second Life is, how fast it’s growing, it’s not just for geeks (there are actually women there!), how some big name brands have a presence there, and a smattering of funny and intriguing parallels to the real world.

But now every news source has written the “101″ article, from the Economist (the “Living a Second Life” special report) to the Billings Gazette (serving the Montana and Wyoming region; “Virtual world attracts ‘residents’ who meet, spend real money”). And yet your readers are still hungry to hear more.

So, what do you write? Possible angles for your “Second Life 201″ article include:

The positive, glowing update

Lots of new stuff to say: the new population statistics are impressive, there are lots more consumer brand sites to talk about, the first virtual millionaire has been coined, and maybe some readers didn’t catch your first story. Pick and choose from the following positive points to make your case that Second Life is still a neat new thing:

• • The stats show it’s very popular and growing. 5.2 million unique users for June. A big analyst firm said that in four years 80% of heavy internet users will be engaged in virtual worlds
  • Many of the largest, most respected companies have a major presence in Second Life
  • People can make real money and provide real value and services
  • It’s pioneering - we’re exploring a new world and, in turn, you can’t even say what the value will be down the line. But it’s exciting to be a part of its evolution
  • At the beginning of the Internet people said it was {full of smut, overhyped, useless, etc.} and it evolved over time into something very useful. Same here.
  • Like all media it just mirrors ourselves. Sure, there’s smut, rudeness, cliquishness but there are also communities for people with health problems and music and art. Just like real life.
  • What do you do there? Well, what do you do in life!
  • Just get involved. It’s so new that you can’t really grasp what it’s about until you’ve been a part of it

The negative, cynical slam

C’mon - you know you want to. If you can dish out the dirt on an overhyped technology maybe you can beat those other hacks to Second Life’s inevitable fall from the hype. And you’ll come out looking practical, skeptical, and immune to trends. Pick and choose from the following negative points to make your case that Second Life is not as great as it first seemed:

• It’s not catching on. Poke holes in the figures - it’s easy and fun! Resident figures include multiple avatars per person, many users are not relevant to American or European business needs, number of abandoned avatars (85% per Wired, 90% per InformationWeek) is very high, the numbers are not useful since the number of retired accounts is not given each month and they do not show active users which runs about 10% of the “total population” stat Linden Labs prominently publishes. [note: for a good summary of all the places to get Second Life user stats, see Social Signal]
• Tsk tsk about the financial stats. They show that sales are stagnant ($609,000 US in June down from >$700,000 in February, March, and April)
• Interview or quote Clay Shirky. He writes that “fewer than 200,000 people have given Second Life even a cumulative work week of their time, over the history of the platform.”
• Be practical - we’re talking real money to have a presence there and what kind of return do you expect to get? When asked, representatives from some large corporations that have Second Life presences admit they are there because of hype and don’t get much out of it

The unique angle

A case study of a virtual entrepreneur or company that just created a presence is always nice (a local angle is nice if you can get it). Or one specific cultural topic such as virtual sex or the virtual economy.

The deep thought piece

Start with a funny thing that’s just happened in Second Life and then get philosophical.

• Why do we laugh at spending money on virtual goods when we don’t laugh at spending money on non-functional luxury goods?
• How much of “you” is your virtual representation?
• Could you overcome handicaps or even death in virtual space?
• What is the role of government and law in virtual worlds?
• Should one build a society to be “fun”? Or profitable? Self-actualizing? How do you balance these?
• How do cultural institutions like marraige translate to virtual worlds?

In closing, my snarky tone is just for fun and is not trying to diminish the value or motives behind the stories I read on Second Life. The typical audience for these stories is not someone who has already read a dozen other stories just like it. And if everything could only be written once by one person, I wouldn’t have a lot to write about either! I’m simply noting how the stories have moved from “101″ to “201″ level and that the “201″ versions seem to be more negative even though either type of article can be written by just selecting which things to say. I do wish reporters would provide a more complete picture (most stories are heavily positive or negative instead of a more critical balancing of the two) or technical depth (impact of standards, possible alternatives).

I’ve been writing this blog for about 10 months (and 115 postings) now and have enjoyed the opportunity to participate in my small way in various debates in the internet community. I’ve been able to get feedback to ideas I’m working on, publish smaller pieces of content that don’t normally fit the heft or formal voice I use in my professional writing, and plug an event or report now and then. In all, it’s been a good experience.

So reading Jakob Nielsen’s (a usability guru) recent screed against casual blogging (”Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)“) I can’t help but feel he’s missed the point of this particular style of blogging (blogging technology can also be used to do other styles of blogs such as formal content publication and internal enterprise blogging).

He begins by relating a conversation he had with a “world leader in his field” about whether to blog.

… I recommended that he should instead invest his time in writing thorough articles that he published on a regular schedule. Given limited time, this means not spending the effort to post numerous short comments on ongoing blogosphere discussions.

I’d summarize the rest by saying Jakob describes how the wildly varying nature of most blogs (entries of varying level of quality, expertise, and depth) leads to a scattershot approach that sinks the writer below the thin upper crust of top experts in the field. Longer, in-depth, carefully written entries would be better since they would maintain the appearance of having the highest level of expertise.

That may be true if the goal is to be a good writer. But I think most bloggers want to be a good conversationalist. If you were trying to engage people at a dinner party I would not recommend you stand up, talk for thirty solid minutes in a properly formatted argument with numbered points and rebuttals for anticpated arguments, then sit down. If you were at a conference that would be appropriate. They are different forums. His comments seem to frame blogging as being about content when it’s really about community.

As for the variance in quality, expertise, and depth I think readers of blogs have different expectations than they do of a white paper, conference presentation, or academic thesis. In many cases, the reader simply wants to live in the head of the blogger to see what they find interesting and what they’ve been reading. That’s an attention management characteristic of new technologies such as social tagging/bookmarking as well - people pay more attention to content that people they respect are paying attention to.

Many bloggers just link to articles or provide minimal commentary on the topics of the day along with the links. Jakob dislikes this - “Blog postings will always be commodity content: there’s a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else’s work.” But I think back to one of my first posts in 2006 where I talked about David Foster Wallace’s writing style: “The point of Wallace’s writing style, to me, is that the value of his content is the unique structure he superimposes on it. More than most other writers, Wallace really gives you a feeling of not just what he knows and thinks, but how he is thinking about it.” That is what is going on in many blogs as well. Even if a blogger is just linking to information, he provides value by the structure imposed on it - what is selected.