For fun and profit, Jeff Jarvis loves to see himself as a prophet We haven't kicked around Jarvis for a while so this little bit of lunacy presents itself as an excellent opportunity.

We think Judge Posner drank deep of the kooky koolaid but Jarvis saying that newspapers are free-riding on the links created because of the value of the content they have originated is just absolute reactive horseshit: It flies in the face of creating value through content.

We blog but we have an enduring love of the business we grew up with. We think that the professional news gathering businesses (across print and broadcast) have largely failed to utilize the Internet. But...

(Soliloquy: Let's do without all the malarkey and cut right to the current darling of the Web, Twitter)

Imagine everyone (a big bunch, anyway) retweeting (kinda like Elmer Fudd advancing in the other direction) some innocuous thing such as "For fun and profit, Jeff Jarvis loves to see himself as a prophet". While the statement appears to be true it is an opinion that has no inherent value. The retweeting (essentially a linking) might bring it to the top of Twitter Trends but without the value of substantiation and a lucid coherent presentation it has no real value.

Update: Actually, they'd have to use a hashtag on Twitter to get to the top of trends. As soon as "retweet" was associated with Fudd all thinking stopped. Oh well. Again, essentially a linking.  ¶ 6/30/2009 10:01:00 PM