everybody is equal, but some are more equal than others

Everything is connected. To demystify this claim some, I will outlay the sequence of events that led to this post. First, there was a random conversation over lunch about Coolhunting and Josh Spear and the sense of accomplishment and entitlement that their owners emanate (to be fair, the former to much lesser degree than the latter). Something like this:  great, you have this site where you write about Comme Des Garcons for H&M, and since brands are so desperate right now, you get to become a "trendsetter" and people come to you for advice. And if you are a really really good boy, you get to go to Davos. That is fine enough I guess, and many years passed when I haven't given a second thought (or , for that matter, any thought) to this subject. Then, there was another random IM conversation last night with the founder of the site above, edopter (no, I don't know him. At least I didn't until the IM conversation). I mentioned this site before, and it's been around for almost a year now. Sure enough, the concept is not new as it relies on crowdsourcing like so many other sites (most notably, ThisNext). But the idea of how this collaborative trensetting is executed might be new, and worth taking notice. Not only that this site is very neat in terms of user interface and the ease of navigation, but it has stuff that Mr. Spear doesn't. For one, there are no limited number of authors and no editorial voice (none of the submitted trends has to be approved by the site founders). That is, the site is a pure example of a distributed authority. Second, there is ton of transparency. Those guys actually release their data (e.g. they offer the trend breakdown by age, demographics, country, etc) making the site an excellent digital ethnography tool for account planners and everyone else who cares about user insights (it would be awesome if ubiquitous Brand Tags actually offered the same thing. But not discussing business models here). Finally, there are also different ways of curation, aside of the pretty standard one, by "category": the site offers most popular, newest, by age group, alphabetically, buzzing trends, recently updated, AND by category display of trends. Also: the site is pretty deep as it offers a ton of info about a trend (an overview, pitches, videos, images, buzz, in-depth info, and add content option) for those interested in learning more. In short, it's Wikipedia + Google Trends + ThisNext = the best of web. Which really leads me to the question that made me think about all of this stuff in the first place, and that is self-promotion vs. promotion of ideas. Or, how the markets for ideas (or any market, as a matter of fact) work: do they encourage the exchange & the flow of ideas, goods, money, and capital, or, are they set up so they allow only few to get rich & famous? (think current economic crisis for answer). The inevitable reality is that there will always be people who are more equal than others. It's all about how you get there.