MARINE CITY, MI (March 19) - In a sad and pathetic attempt to linkbait, New Tech Heroes editor Tom Kephart today ran a story about several "A-List" bloggers filling up blogspace with comments about each other. The feces-flinging began with a post by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch, and was soon followed by over two dozen blogonistas weighing in on venture capital, snobbery and corporate murder.

"I just wanted to be part of this moving human interest story," Kephart told his own blog in a post written by himself. "If there's navel-gazing to be done, I certainly don't want to be left out." Kephart added that he has recently lost over 30 pounds, which allowed him to find his navel to gaze at for the first time in years.

The TechCrunch post and the many posts reporting about the post (which oddly didn't include The Huffington Post, despite being mentioned in Arrington's post) were the lead story on Techmeme on Wednesday afternoon.

Kephart added that he was in complete agreement not only with what Arrington had written, but everyone else who had weighed in on the subject, even though everyone disagreed with each other. "I can't risk alienating any A-List bloggers - or venture capitalists - who might accidently read my blog," Kephart said in a separate interview with himself. "Although New Tech Heroes is only valued at a bit over US$2,000 (€1,281), I'm always willing to listen to offers, especially those in the low to mid seven figures."

No one else contributed to this report, not even some anonymous blogger at $5.00 per post.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Kephart, New Tech Heroes.

Not all conversations are friendly. Real life conversations can be confrontational, angry, and unpleasant. We often talk with someone who has an opinion different from ours. At the end of the conversation we may have changed each other's minds, or we may come away convinced we never want to talk to that person again.

Virtual conversations are no different, they're just a lot bigger. Anyone can read the conversation and add their own take on the topic by commenting, or they can explain their feelings in a post on their own blog. These conversations are worth having because they put ideas on the virtual table to discuss, and when ideas are being discussed, good things can happen.

An example from today: Mahalo CEO and founder Jason Calacanis wrote a post on his blog on Friday titled "How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)." Duncan Riley posted a response on TechCrunch shortly thereafter titled "Calacanis fires people who have a life." I'm not going to go in the details of the conversation itself, you can do that by clicking on the links if you haven't already read them.

This real time "virtual conversation" between Calacanis and Riley, made up of their original blog posts, plus many comments on both writers' posts and many other blogs weighing in on the subject, wasn't possible a few years ago. The widespread development and acceptance of social media technology like blogs has created these large-scale conversations. The conversation - and conflict - between the two men was significant enough to make the top of Techmeme's headline list on Friday evening.

I believe it's a positive thing to be able to have a conversation discussing workplace expectations and environment. In the past, someone might have written an article for a magazine on the subject, then people would discuss it around the water cooler or perhaps write a letter to the editor for the next issue (do you read letters to the editor?). Now, however, we have a full-blown debate going on over the pros and cons of what Jason Calacanis believes is the ideal workplace versus what Duncan Riley thinks that workplace should be. It's a bit chaotic, but it does drive a topic to the front of our collective priority list, at least for a short time. In the end, maybe we end up changing each other's minds a little - or we may decide never to read anything either of them writes ever again.

It's an exciting time to be involved with the technologies that make this virtual conversation possible. Employees, customers and prospects are all looking for businesses and organizations that are participating in this upheaval of personal communications. It's time to ask: Am I part of the conversation?

Photo credit: Marcello eM, Poland, sxc.hu