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December 14, 2005
A Circus of Carnivals
The Carnival of the Vanities was a fantastic idea when Bigwig started it. It has aged badly, for two reasons: the format encourages the inclusion of posts that are not particularly worth reading for most people, and the blogosphere has simply grown so big that there is not enough time for a normal person to read all or even most of the carnival entries. (The latter is a problem that virtually all USENET groups hit in the mid-1990s, and the former has been a problem from the moment USENET was opened up to a general audience.) Internet size drives narrowcasting because it's the only way an employed human can keep up.
More even than that, the idea of carnivals has spread to the point that there is a Carnival of the Carnivals to keep track of them all — well, frankly, not even all of them.
On the other hand, Glenn Reynolds might have hit upon a fix: have ad hoc carnivals about specific topics, like digital cameras.
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