Image via CrunchBaseAs friend feed continues its rise in the blogosphere, and we learn to customize our RSS readers like Google reader to only get the good stuff from the people we know, trust and follow, is anyone following Techmeme anymore?

As techmeme was the source to go to, to find out what was happening, it might not be that way anymore, as techmeme traffic has flattened, while friend feed traffic is on a major rise according to Compete.com

This is great for friend feed, but has bigger connotations for people who are out looking for fresh new bloggers, or fresh new information outside of our circle of comfort. It also fractures the readership when it comes to crossing barriers to entry, in that new bloggers who do not use Friend Feed, or do not make enough friends within the social network to help drive traffic to their blog within friend feed might find themselves waiting even longer before they are found, and friended by others on the networks.

Friend Feed does not mean that the blog apocalypse has started at all, blogging is not a dying art form, but what it means is that the entry curve for new bloggers is going to be stepper than it has been in the past. Systems like Friend Feed and others start taking some of the attention off new bloggers, or upcoming voices in favor of the comfortable and the known.

That is what would be the real issue, new bloggers that bring a fresh perspective to blogging might go unfound, but this also brings in line another system that might replace it. Before the advent of the music industry, musicians worked under the patronage of a person with a lot of influence and money, so the musician could continue to make music. What I am seeing is that there is a certain amount of patronage via linking from a known popular blogging voice to a smaller yet unknown blog. Your link then becomes your voice of approval, meaning traffic will be driven to the new site.

Of course the old standards of linking to other articles still applies, we live and die by the cross links that people give us to our own work. But given that systems like Tailrank, Technorati and now Techmeme are being quietly killed off in favor of systems like Friend Feed and other sites, the aspiration is going to be rather than gaming techmeme to get on the site, it will be all about making friends with powerful voices, and trying to get them to link to you.

Tags: patronage, techmeme, friend feed, new, bloggers, blogging, blog, voices, tailrank, Technorati