((Insert here)) is the new ((Insert here))
By Dan O'Connor May 29th, 2007
In Buzz/sentiment analysis · Stories
This could be one of Mat’s column ideas: Bobbie Johnson asks whether “Facebook is the new Apple”. Yet it was only last November that Ben Bajarin was wondering “can Facebook become the new Myspace?” and merely last month that Tessa Wegert asked, a touch more conditionally, “could Facebook become the new Myspace?”. Conflictingly, however, also last month, some of the folks over at Digg.com were demanding to know: “is Facebook the new Twitter?”; a question admirable in its unwillingness to bow to traditional notions of linear chronology. But, for those still keeping up, Scott Barnes (a developer evangelist for Microsoft) has now verblessly asked, “Twitter the new blog?”, a question which can surely only be answered by asserting that “Pink is the new Blog”. But then, I suppose it has been a few years since anyone worried, not just verblessly, but colonically, “Blogging: the new Journalism?” - a question Tom Wolfe really thought he’d answered in 1973. Naturally, it was a journalist (at USA Today) who claimed that “Gay cowboys are the new Penguins” - a sentence that could surely never have been typed, even by an infinite number of monkeys. Of course, this all started in 1961 with Diana Vreeland’s declaration that “pink is the new black”, a stylish statement that forty-six years later had mutated into “Beta is the new black” - something we should probably be thankful that Ms Vreeland did not live to hear.
All of which makes me wish I had the patience to draw a map as cool as this one, from thedigram.com
So what’s the new new in your life?
1 Mat Morrison // May 29, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I’ve diagrammed your article as follows:
(you have to love GraphViz. Well, I do, anyway.)
2 Dan O'Connor // May 29, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Well, I’ve since found out that “transsexual sportswriters are the new gay cowboys”, so you’re gonna need to update…
3 Bobbie Johnson // May 29, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Heh, I did write a paragraph about why it was stupid to say “X is the new Y” in my post, but excised it because I’d already rambled plenty by the time I got to the end.
Also: there’s a lot of “blogging about X is killing professional writing about X” at the moment too (movies, books, design etc).
4 Mat Morrison // May 30, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Done
digraph {
apple -> facebook;
myspace -> facebook;
myspace -> facebook;
myspace -> facebook;
twitter -> facebook;
blog -> twitter;
blog -> pink;
journalism -> blog;
penguins -> gay_cowboys;
black -> pink;
black -> beta;
gay_cowboys -> transsexual_sportswriters
}
5 Mat Morrison // May 30, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Bobbie,
See also the “Is Blogging Killing Planning” meme.
6 Dan O'Connor // May 30, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I would be considerably more worred, Mat, were Blogging Planning Killing…