Exeunt A-List stage left?

There is an increasing trend, where the penny is dropping that many "A List" bloggers are using the medium as a broadcast rather than a conversational medium. This has been a trend for some time, but it has been made even clearer by the way Twitter is working now, where it is becoming a conversational medium for ideas rather than trivia.

Anyway, here is another post from WinExtra that is flagging this trend of A List people using Twitter just to hype themselves:

The whole purpose; or at least the purpose that is pimped out to the general internet public is that things like Facebook, Twitter and even FriendFeed are a great way to create new friendships, keep in touch with all these new and old friends and to have a conversation with everyone involved. To an extent among the average users this might be the case but in watching these services for some time now I have come to the conclusion that for the early adopter crowd and other A-Lister types conversation is the last thing they are interested in.

For this very large group this whole social engine is nothing more than another way for them to hype themselves and whatever conference/project they happen to be working on at the time. I first got an inkling of this self-gratifying promotionalism as I got involved with Twitter because of my work on TwitBox. Sure there were conversations going on but it was on a two tiered level with very few of the top tier players showing any real interest in the rest of us users.

And this is not the only peasant who is revolting - there was a big discussion of this on Twitter a few days ago (see here). I can also confirm from my own experience that some of the leading lights from a few years ago are "past due" in terms of thought leadership and their Twittering makes banality look exciting - no names, but I'm sure followers know of whom we speak

Its interesting to think about why this pushback is happening - the more interactive nature of Twitter makes it clearer who is (i) driving original thought and (ii) is actually interacting with other people. What I will find fascinating is to see how the social media "power law" works in this cas - the rich may get richer in a positive loop system, but what happens when they no longer perform? This is now very visible on a traceable social network, so it will be educational to watch - and learn from.