Will Davies “questions the blogosphere gift economy”:http://www.theisociety.net/archives/001145.html, suggesting that some people use that gift economy to benefit themselves – a charge levelled by others earlier against virtual community boosters like Howard. Personally I don’t see the problem – if people choose to give out valuable information for their own altruistic reasons and others take that information and use it for self-interested reasons that doesn’t invalidate the original motivation. But perhaps I have misunderstood Will’s post which was more in the nature of a provocation than an argument.
David Wilcox responds to this with a long interesting post containing this key observation:
Media, politicians and think tanks get locked into self-regarding loops paying too little attention to enlightening wider publics. Blogs could be a way to break into this… citizens’ self-publishing and all that. But not if the ethos becomes just as self regarding, with bloggers mainly writing about other bloggers. It is a bit scary, I suspect, for most people to start blogging, and so they look around to take comfort from others doing the same thing. If you want links and mentions – easiest from other blogs – you can easily fall into following the prevailing ethos.
For a lighter look at blogosphere cliques, see this humorous “Village Voice piece”:http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0409/essay.php.
