It's Not About the Writing...

Over the past several weeks I've realized how much the blogosphere is not actually about the writing, whether good or bad. The blogosphere is an organic community that thrives on constant interaction between bloggers. Any blogger who refuses to participate in the community inevitably is talking to themselves. This nugget of an idea was planted when I read Cory Doctorow's interesting debate with a Microsoft employee over Microsoft's cornering of the media player market in Norway. The debate between Doctorow and the employee was far more interesting than Doctorow's initial post.

While many people are writing some fairly great things on their blogs, I still suspect that without an active community blogs would fail. Recently I participated in a semi debate with local Connecticut blogger Aldon Hynes. We discussed how online gaming communities may be making people more anti-social. My initial post was kind of interesting, but what was key was people's reactions to the post. Aldon even carried the debate over to his blog.

So while I think that blogs that blogs have a lot to do with writing, the central key is not the blogger him or herself, but the people that respond to the blogs. For it is true that we are shaped by the interactions with our peers.