Vaudeville

This media showdown is getting really interesting. In no particular order, some comments about some of the players:

• Mike Arrington -- Why on Earth is he keeping Marshall Kirkpatrick in such a visible position. Nothing against the guy, he's a good writer and a competent reviewer, but he doesn't have a clue about what makes Arrington so viral. Neither does Mike--who thinks he's writing about consumer-facing apps--but his instincts about the enterprise implications of his take are unerring, and extremely valuable in this media showdown. Meanwhile I keep hitting the spacebar with Marshall whenever Mike leaves town. Gotta stop the bleeding. Marshall should go write for Pete Cashmore, where he's a better fit.
• Om Malik -- Recovering from a tailspin caused by investment-itis, where His Omness was too busy thinking about tech stuff to pay attention to what brung him to the party he's launching. In the last 24 hours he's hopped on his favorite Skype Is Dead meme, so I'm back from space-barring him and his What do you think page view cash register pitch. Om is the king of what was will still be, and he knows his VoIP stuff cold. Plus he's a great guy and you can't fake that. And speaking of tech conservatives...
• Nick Carr -- Nick's problem is that his next book on Utility Computing is too good to put down, and it's not even written yet. Jonathan Schwartz and Amazon S3 and Google's entire Gmail attention strategy are writing it in real time, and everytime Nick talks about it on his blog it blows his snarkfest right out of the water. His blogbaiting and Wikipedia suckumentary are oh so not mattering, and everytime he writes about something he knows about (virtualization) he drives the stake in all the more. Face it Nick, you're too smart for your own shtick. He, Stephen O'Grady, and Dan Farber own the enterprise analysis space, except when they can't see around the blind spot between the rear and right view mirrors. You know, the one where Ray Ozzie doesn't really get RSS yet. And speaking of RSS...
  
• Dave Winer
• Tim O'Reilly -- Finding his sea legs in the Blogosphere, he's clearly had a meeting with his editors to figure out a successful posture, sending Nat Torkington out to contribute detailed analyses of Valley startups, and personally carrying Microsoft's Live water with a long, persuasive why-the rich-get-richer Web x0 back-end lockdown monopoly. The length, depth, and quality of the pieces begs the question: What is O'Reilly Media's business? Certainly not page views, or keeping strategic information behind the firewall, or How Open Source will Compete or Win. And speaking of Web 2.0...
• John Battelle -- Pointed prominently at previously described pieces. Restructured his blog and then in recent days appeared to return to the old strategy of being John Battelle, with good results. There's still time for his conference to jell, but harking back to his Database of Intentions insight will not sufficiently capture enough of the Attention momentum to balance Tim's tip toward Microsoft and Sun and away from the grassroots. Supernova had a hard time competing with free unconferences, and so will Web 2.0, unless John opens the door to Winer in a meaningful way--and that ain't gonna happen.

And if all this weren't enough to set the heart afibrillatin', all of these guys are standing in a circle facing each other at the OK Corral. Om and Mike are carving up the page view widget real estate on their blogs, competing against their deal with Battelle's FMPub. With the All Star game history, trading barriers are dropping, so we'll soon see various relief pitchers moving from one site to another. The old guard trades are tipping too--ZDNet's David Berlind is doing a MashupCamp events startup with Doug Gold, late of IDG. Amanda, Scoble, Staci, MacManus, every single Gangster and guest--the whole world is watching as vaudeville makes its move for the Big Screen.