Speed is a fine thing. And when it comes to fast analysis GigaOm is pretty good.

I also think — as my colleague Jeremiah Owyang has pointed out — that there’s value in the conversation in the blogosphere, which happens because of the speed.

But I stand by what I said — that immediacy on its own is not a virtue. And thoughtfulness that comes from years of observation and interactions with people doing the actual work in the space has some value.

There’s room for all of this. So long as we don’t make a fetish of immediacy.

Whether you’re pondering the imponderable, or writing at 300 words per minute, it’s all about catering and then latterly delivering to your niche…

My own style (click on my name to see my blog) is to post less frequently with greater depth of thinking about the issues. I am not so much reporting what is going on in the industry, as I am trying to put together a “hitchhiker’s guide” to utility computing and service level automation. As such, it makes little sense for me to reach for a post just to fill in some time. (In fact, I used to do link posts, but I’ve found I’m not always inspired to keep that up.)

What you guys do requires as much insight as you can muster while beating the rest of the blog community to the punch. As such, you are a “hub” in the blog community, while blogs like mine are “spokes” targeted at deep study of one or two specific issues.

One other point: when I left my full-time job two years ago and moved to freelance work, I re-discovered the value of reading news, and lots of it, every day. Reading wasn’t a billable activity for me in the office rat race, but it certainly makes me more productive and capable of serving my clients. And I need both the rapid news posts and the “feature” posts from bloggers. GigaOm is the best example I know of a blog that delivers both.

Though I do wonder if you guys ever sleep.

Sometimes I want to do a quick sketch, sometimes a painting, sometimes a few doodles - you have to follow what you want to do, as to tie yourself to rote makes it a chore, not fun. And imho when you stop having fun, your community stops having fun.

First of all thank you for all your nice comments, and reading us. Specifically about this part of your comment, “Om Malik deliberately and strictly take a few hours off every week to meditate on the bigger picture emerging the tech world” I wonder if my posts on Verizon Open, and Google Infrastructure are the kind of posts you had in mind in terms of expectations.

Thankfully, my team has basically made it mandatory for me to take two days off a week to think. Hopefully, results will start to show over next few weeks :-)

Most of us who blog about technology have a different mental rhythm. Sure sometimes you need to blog fast and let the audience educate you. Sometimes you need to take some time off and meditate.

I think what really matters is knowing your readers and your community. Six years of writing have taught me that one little fact of life.

But those criticizing copy-paste-quick type bloggers do have a point. If people like Om Malik deliberately and strictly take a few hours off every week to meditate on the bigger picture emerging the tech world, make the deeper connections and write about those, everybody will benefit. What’s more, that will also make their quick posts so much better!

Something to think about. Hope Om sees this comment.

However, there’s plenty of conversation that goes on outside techmeme or beyond the so-called a-list blogs. I blogged for a long time at a slower pace and found plenty of opportunities to participate in the conversation like that (I still do, on my personal blog).

It may be true that there is a lot of light analysis without much thought and perhaps too much regurgitation. But quick analysis isn’t necessarily light, and restating something in a slightly different way can sometimes be just the spark that’s needed for a new way to look at things.

Better thought and insight doesn’t happen just with one person sitting around coming up with it after a long time either — part of my point is that the rapid fire back and forth with feedback is a thought process of its own. But it’s distributed across many people.

Often the simple test of a blog post is to ask so what. Seeing the wood from the trees is an art only able to the few who both have a deep technical and business understanding of the implications.

Just saying look another tree because you are at point is (excuse the pun) pointless. I’d love to hear Arrington’s views on how APML combined with Openid will change the advertising landscape or how HTML5 differs from XHTML2 and what impact that will have on social blogging but I go to people like Brian Oberkirch, Chris Messina, Danny Ayres, Alex Iskold and many others for that thought insight.

Sp yes less is more if it means cutting down the pointless noise and PR lapdog mentality for some personal insight after careful consideration which does take time.

The power of distributed thinking — the smart world — is that no one person does it alone. But many slow, deep thinkers rely on fast availability of news and quick analysis, just as the quick news is best when it incorporates thought moving at other speeds and produced at different volumes.

“magical” other writers? Other bloggers, analysts, journalists, writers, commenters, and even PR people and company executives. It’s not magic.