Fred Wilson asks if Meta is Better:

Ok, that’s it for now on Digg versus Netscape. These services and many others are called “meta” services. They aggregate content and the wisdom of the crowd to create a “meta” view of what is going on. Delicous popular does that too. And so does memeorandum and its sister sites.

Fred’s talking about the whole “wisdom of crowds” thing, which is indeed something that I find has merit. But I think that the WoC meme has become such that we overuse it—yes, the old “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” mentality. [Trust me, that's a trap that I fall into regularly.]

Fred’s counterpoint is pretty simple:

I am wondering if social networking is the answer. I find that my family, friends, colleagues, and readers emailing me links, tagging them for me in delicious, and leaving them in the comments is the single most useful way to stay on top of what’s important.

And here’s where I go to a personal story of me and Fred: back on 10 Jun, he wrote about the Big Apple Barbeque, and he mentioned Big Bob Gibson’s over in Decatur. I left him a comment, which led to us talking about BBQ back and forth for a while via email. [Told you that the del.icio.us linkposting was going to work out for me; I didn't have to go far to find my comment links.] A few days later, when Fred talked about music, I jokingly added him as a friend on Last.FM with the relationship tie “gives BBQ advice to” between us. Fred reciprocated with “talks about BBQ with”, and then emails me the next day to push M. Ward’s new album on me.

You know what? I think I’m going to give it a try. Why? Two reasons:

1. The wisdom of crowds indicates that I’d like it: two of the top ten most similar artists to M. Ward on Last.FM are Sufjan Stevens and Wilco, two of my top favorites [#1 and #6 at the time of this writing].
2. I consider this an experiment, as I do a decent minority of my music buys: I step outside of my element and see. Here, I’m doing this because I have a personal recommendation from someone who I’m coming to respect. I will not claim to be near the center of Fred’s social network—I’m very much on the fringes—but there’s enough overlap here that could make it work out.

The careful reader will note that I’m balancing the meta with the social. I think that’s where the rubber really meets the road for me: I’m a big believer in community, and I also believe in the wisdom of crowds to help me discern when disintermediation is in order.

I think that Fred will approve.