Chris Coulter's Demo 2006 report
The bloggers at Demo 2006 are all guzzling the new-product Kool-Aid. But un-blogger Chris Coulter has this habit of sending kick-ass, monomaniacal e-mails to just a handful of people. Why he's not monetizing his own eyeballs or cross-platforming his paradigm shift …
Context & Ripple Effects
The day before this item ran, Business 2.0's B2Day post on Demo was already cataloguing how much buzz-slurping surrounded the launch stage, so Valleywag is pushing one step further: the bloggers covering Demo 2006 are, per its framing, drinking the new-product Kool-Aid wholesale. The counterweight it holds up is Chris Coulter, who files no posts but sends what the site calls kick-ass, monomaniacal e-mails to a small circle — an un-blogger whose scarcity is the point.
That the same story got picked up by Tara Hunt's HorsePigCow the same day shows the jab landed exactly where it was aimed: the marketing-and-attention crowd that lives off launch-cycle coverage. The confirmed dynamic — bloggers hyping products uncritically while Coulter distributes privately — sets up Valleywag's running question of whether an audience built on enthusiasm is worth anything as criticism.
First-order effects
- Coulter's small-circle readers get unfiltered Demo verdicts that never appear on the blogs, making his private list the scarce credential at an event drowning in public hype.
- Valleywag sharpens its position as the designated skeptic of the launch-blogging circuit, contrasting itself with the very bloggers whose coverage fills the Demo feed.
Second-order effects
- If private e-mail lists start being read as more credible than launch-stage blogs, Demo's PR apparatus has to court both channels — and bloggers face pressure to show either independence or an honest business model for their enthusiasm.
- Rival skeptics and gossip outlets get a template: mocking the Kool-Aid consensus is cheaper than attending, and repositions a critic against every hyped exhibitor without naming them.
Third-order effects
- Launch-event coverage structurally splits into two tiers — mass promotional blogging that trades access for tone, and small trusted distributions whose scarcity becomes their authority — with advertisers and PR firms eventually forced to price the two differently.
The trend: Product-launch coverage is bifurcating between high-volume promotional blogging and low-volume private analysis, and the credibility premium is moving to the latter.