Mike Butcher - mbites

Mike, I like the way you used "open" to describe blogs and the web as opposed to the social networks, which are more closed. I've long thought that online community in the traditional sense of message boards and chat rooms is a very inward looking model. Only people inside can see and participate. Blogging is more open in that anyone can at least read but I think that actually participating beyond simply commenting IS difficult for most people. In some respects, a lot of social networks are more outward looking than the online communities of old - the content tends to be linkable, rss spreads it, widgets republish it. The social networks also lower the barrier not just of participation via comments but in a whole bunch of ways. That said, social networks are, by definition, based on the idea that community is centred around the individual. The pros and cons of that model have been debated since before the industrial revolution...