PureGin.org

John Barnako wrote an interesting piece (Blogs - Much Ado About Very Little) in his "Internet Daily" newsletter for CBS Marketwatch, noting that the attention that blogs are receiving in the coverage of the American presidential election is perhaps greater than their small readership (relative to the mass media) would warrant.

Point taken. But at the risk of whining ('nobody listens to me but I'm really important anyway'), I would like to point out that each of us, finally, makes her or his own decisions in her or his own context, and the analysis and insight of a few people whose opinions one respects may be much more influential than the popular view. There's a wonderful analysis of decision-making and influence in social networks in Duncan Watt's book "Six Degrees: The Science of A Connected Age" [ISBN: 0393041425].

I find it interesting that much reporting in the mainstream media is concerned with discovering what people think. This is taking to the level of anonymous masses and the statistical everyman what all humans seem to be interested in: finding out what people in our social network think. A good deal of our own decision making seems to be based on what people 'important to us' (not necessarily friends, or even sources allied to our positions) think and feel.

Blogs form an interesting social network, I believe.

• Blogs are relatively influential in their information neighbourhoods (which extend 'offline', too)
• Blogs are not isolated sources of information, but are usually part of an explicit, extended network of blogs.
• This network is likely to associate 'similar' blogs into neighbourhoods

So I suspect that information networks which include blogs are likely to be efficient as influence networks.

The kind of communication that occurs via blogs is more closely related to the notion of political freedom embodied in 'the right to assembly' than the kind of communication embodied in 'freedom of the press'. The size of the largest blog readership isn't a good measure of this kind of information flow - it's more interesting to look at the number of blogs, and how they are linked. Now we're talking - and listening. Or as the case may be, writing - and reading. And that is why blogs matter.