Measuring the rate of New Media Maven Migration

Steve Rubel writes:

If it feels quiet here and even on my Twitter stream you are right. It has been. The reason is Friendfeed. I have become hopelessly addicted to the site. I am sharing a lot of links there that I don't pump into del.icio.us or Twitter, so I recommend picking up my aggregate lifestream feed here. However, if you just want my blog posts, no worries, that feed continues to syndicate.

As one of the commentators on his blog noted however, Steve wrote similarly in March 2007:

Steve, I don't mean to be a pest here but this reminds me of something that you wrote last year about Twitter:

"That brings me back to Twitter. Despite it's lack of management/search features, Twitter is downright addicting. I love it. It's brevity lets me blog more actively and at the same time engage in real-time conversations with my "followers" (as they call it). If things have seemed a little quieter over here, it's because I have been busier over there.

Based on a sample of 1, I can postulate therefore that the new media maven migration frequency is c 15 months (of the unpaid pundit that is.). This seems to roughly match the mean rate if you look at say Twitter buzz rampup vs FriendFeed.

The question is "why" - why bounce off to the New New Thing every 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 years or so. Is it truly because of continually seeking technology improvement, or is it because these people do have a need to constantly be seen to be doing the New New Thing?

If the latter, its an interesting game theory, is maven migration - jump too soon and you risk getting the "wrong" jump and look dumb. Jump too late and new people have jumped before and are the New New mavens and you're a has-been. The trick is to be a fast follower I suspect (the Scoble + 1 month strategy )

Now, a lot of people have jumped onto the (well funded) Friendfeed bandwagon - but I'm not sure its going to be the endemic winner. As many independently minded people have pointed out, it doesn't actually have any major unique value adds, differentiators or barriers to entry. I also suspect its not the one that is growing from real grassroots support - that seems to be something that new entrant Plurk is doing, however.

To be watched with interest.....

Update - Steve Rubel has followed up with a post saying Friendfeed will restructure Search and Online Advertising too. Is this the bury with praise gambit