If you have been following professional blogger, Robert Scoble then you have probably hear that he has replaced Techmeme with FriendFeed as his homepage.  He claims that this is so he can see and hear the smaller voices of the blogging community and find the newest "superstars" since the blogging community has pretty much hit a gap in fresh voices.

Scoble’s correct when he says that the corporate blogger has taken over Techmeme.  Everyday it seems like the same publishers are getting their content on Techmeme throughout the day.  Sure, a smaller publisher might get lucky and lad on the front page, but its rare.  But what does it mean to say a blog is "corporate"?  Is TechCrunch corporate?  I think what Robert Scoble is refering to is the technology blogging elite.  Those people that get first rate access to new sites and new information.

Dave Winer mentioned something similar in his article, Proof That the End is Near, where he talks about the "tech industry superdelegates" and how he is unfollowing them on Twitter in hope to find the smaller voices as well.  It seems that some of the more popular people are looking for the smaller, most likely more original voices in the blogging industry.  No longer are they interested in what someone has to say about what TechCrunch, GigaOM, or even Mashable have to say anymore.  Well they might be interested, but they might move past the headline anymore.

So can FriendFeed help the smaller blogger?  If more people move to the "everybody" tab more frequently then there is that possibility.  If Techmeme and other such sites can utilize the comment system in FriendFeed to help determine the more popular stories, links, and such then it could help the lesser known bloggers become more known.  At least for a while anyway.  Once the more elite bloggers take over the space, it might become a useless practice.

One could utilize something like Yahoo Pipes to filter out the more elite bloggers when they start to move on the FriendFeed space.  But will the extra work be worth it?  Well that is something only time will tell.  I think that FriendFeed can help the smaller blogger become more popular if people are looking for new original voices (like me!).  But someone has to be looking for those people and link to them.  Forget the Pentiums, it’s all about the links.