Hey Blogger! Are you influential?

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It’s a question that staff in public relations departments around the world are starting to ask (at least amongst themselves) with increasing frequency. Some, naturally, already have their shortlist, but others, frankly most, are still figuring out whether they should talk to bloggers at all.

The New York Times offered an interesting perspective today on why it’s so hard to discern between the genuinely influential and the ‘amplifiers’ – those bloggers who simply turn up the volume on a story. In his story, For Bloggers Seeking Name Recognition, Nothing Beats a Scandal, Tom Zeller highlights that bloggers have a habit of becoming influential – even notorious – out of the blue. For example, who would have known, Zeller points out, that Arianna Huffington’s blog would prove to be a top destination for those searching for reportage of the resignation of the Dick Cheney’s top advisor, Lewis Libby.

And yet, according to the folks at blog search engine Technorati, Huffington certainly appeared to have been a key player in moulding and shaping opinion on the topic, at least if the number of other bloggers linking to her site was anything to go by.

So, do all these links mean that Arianna really is influential, or are we simply seeing on the Web what’s been happening at the water cooler for decades – a crowd gathering around someone with some good gossip?

The answer is probably a bit of both. Gossips are after all harmless most of the time, but most of us know that you ignore gossips at your peril. Sooner or later, the joke might just be on you…

But before we get too paranoid, it’s worth noting that the pendulum of the blogosphere seems to swing more often towards idle gossip than it does towards hard-nosed reporting – at least for the time being. In his NYT article, Zeller concludes by pointing out that the other big news of the day – according to Technorati – was CNN’s revelation that Star Trek actor, George Takei has been outed as gay.