one issue that seems central here is the *context* (or, as you have phrased it, “situational relevance”) of the community. obviously, being linked by an “A list” blogger in your particular community will up your traffic and push you up the ladder, but I find that in the slice (node?) of mom-blogosphere that i network in the politics of connection, reciprocity, and community-affirmation are much more largely built on the practice of reciprocity of commenting first and then linkages. And of course, this makes sense in the situational context of mommy-blogging–where an unspoken rule is that you reciprocate if someone leaves a comment on your blog. In my network, I have seen quite a few conversations lately about “comment ettiquette” and how individuals will stop reading a blog if that blogger does not return the favor (break the “friendship”). At the same time I see a lot of discussion of comment-fatigue and secret admissions to “commenting on, but not really reading” a post. Reciprocal commenting strengthens and broadens the community; but at the same time, the “pressure to comment” regardless of the content of a post is felt keenly among this set (and I include myself in there).

There is a contextual, gendered aspect to this that fascinates me. I’m interested to think more about the relationship of the A-list mommy-blogosphere to the “underground” that most of us belong to.
Thanks…

Just saying …

There are two things going on here in terms of motivation. People want to see the traffic spike, that’s the initial rush, but people also want to build their reader base. Of the 10k people who come from a digg or del.icio.us, maybe 50 of them will stay around and bookmark/subscribe. I think that’s the connection/brokering – we know our audience is out there, but how do we find that audience? Someone like Reubel can make the connections for us. And I think this is important because it says alot about why we like Reubel. He might be a great guy, but we read him because he connects us to others who share interests. This is the beauty of blog as community – the only shame is it take Reubel-like numbers for the community to emerge at scale.

I think this ties in well to Technorati’s recent relaunch. They want to make blogs easier to find, and you can clearly see the business logic. The blogosphere thrives off of the long tail, but finding your niche network is difficult. Technorati wants to solve this, but it does break the brokering model.

A telling statistic could look something like this – for all blogs in your newsreader, how many non-friend blogs are you subscribed to that aren’t in the technorati top 1000 (news sources aside). I wonder what this ratio would be. I should compute it for myself. It just really lets you see how difficult it is to discover the long tail of the blogosphere.

Ouch I jump the scary comment step.
By the way, I thinks it’s easier to drop a comment then to send a mail… you don’t put yourself in a waiting position … it’s just a bottle in the sea 4 someone to catch, maybe it will be one of your reader.
Good ranking = good content
High recognition = good comment
Maybe I missed that one…. I’ll have to wait to see (Damn !)

;-) a fan

I’d say we want audiences. I know you’re not not saying this, but – different people are out there trying to get their message to different audiences – some (e.g., those that e-mail Reubel) want a big audience, want to have success for its own sake or because they think they’re good writers and deserve it [not that this is a bad thing]; some write because they like writing for a given existing community (family, friends, co-workers, others in their industry, etc.); some of the latter become the former through organic growth; etc.

There’s already a pretty good set of case-studies for exactly this set of interactions and aspirations: the music industry, circa 1950s-1970s. Now – the barriers to entry were higher (i.e., you had to get a record contract, or at least be able to put together a competent demo), and that erected a barrier to access that WordPress and Blogspot don’t. But let’s set that aside for a second – let’s say that anyone who has a computer and free time enough to blog seriously is roughly equivalent to a band that could put together a demo and shop it around. What the hub-bloggers are equivalent to, then, are DJs of pre-corporate radio. Station managers had varying amounts of sway over their DJs (not unlike the fact that a lot of prominent bloggers do have some sort of institutional home), but the best – the BoingBoings of the DJ world – had pretty much free reign over what they played.

Now, if you had good drugs/women and an only pretty-good record, you were probably in business for a few spins in a way that (presumably) most hub-bloggers aren’t as susceptible (also, the aspirant linkees are dropping by Steve Reubel’s studio, blog in hand) – but it still had to be pretty-good to get through, and would generally stand on its own two feet after that. Or not. The DJs were putting their particular reputation on the line every time they put the needle onto vinyl, in a similar manner to how bloggers put their rep on the line when they out-link.

But of course – different bands were after different things. Many wanted to be international rock stars; many were content to get to the level where they could merely earn a living doing the thing they loved. Blogging is still a few steps behind in this regard – only by being a blogging superstar can you really earn a living at it, right now; being a mid-level blogger with a regular audience gets you…the satisfaction of a job well done and an occasional purchase off your Amazon wishlist.

So not a perfect analogy, but something to think about at any rate.