Jon Udell has produced an interesting study of "social networking in Radiospace." Analyzing the list of RSS channels to which he subscribes, Jon poses some interesting questions about bloggers' willingness to reveal their regular reads, what kinds of social organizations might emerge out of such transparency, and how bloggers cluster.
Using the word "hive," Jon contends that blogspace is moving away from a unified body of like-minded people -- and is instead beginning to follow traditional social networking models that apply to affinity groups, subgroups, people connected by weak links, and so on. Interesting stuff -- particularly his thoughts on clustering.
On the flip mode, John Hiler's recent essay Blogosphere: The Emerging Media Ecosystem goes far to outline the connections between -- and around -- bloggers and professional journalists. He differentiates between breaking news and making sense (fixing the news?), and he looks at the value of grassroots reportage and collaborative media. Perhaps most importantly, he even paints a pretty picture. The diagram he provides titled "The Complete Blogosphere in Action" is well-reasoned and sets a solid foundation for further thinking about the relationship between amateur and professional journalists and media makers.
And finally, Dave Winer spent some time exploring how blogs might add to the conference, convention, and trade show experience. This is something I've been thinking about for awhile. Why hasn't anybody built a Web business around reporting on trade shows and other business- and technology-related events? "We went to Comdex so you don't have to." People could provide an online show floor of exhibitors, complete with participant, journalist, and attendee comments on their wares and information. Folks could report on the break-out sessions and keynotes. Participants could build a collective context for the event and the content offered at the gathering.
Alan Reiter builds on Winer's argument. WiFi + blogs = Might as well be there yourself?
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