Kamy Huise writes on the Marcom Blog and on her blog about an interesting hypothesis: that as the number of PR weblogs grows, the “PR blog community” will become fragmented in small groups:
With the growth of the community well beyond the natural 150-person limit that tends to organically form, I hypothethize that the community will be ripe for further fracture and breakup into natural groupings, such the formation of the International Association of Nobodies (IAN).
Following up on a post by Allan Jenkins, she also points to AIN and the SEA-EAT Blog & Wiki as examples of spontaneous grouping.
Quick questions for those interesting in thinking -and discussing- about these topics (in the spirit of using the Internet as an idea processor):
- What kind of relationship with a blog author is implied when we: a) read the blog without subscribing to the feed; b) subscribe to the feed; c) comment on or trackback to a blog?
- Are we (“the PR blogosphere”) a community? By what definition?
- Is Dunbar’s Number relevant for online communities? If it is, for what types of communities, and is the PR blogosphere such a community?
- What are the community indicators for the PR blogosphere?
- Is IAN a sign of fracture in the PR blogosphere?
- Is IAN the same type of meme-storm as the SEA-EAT Blog & Wiki (*) ? What are the similarities/differences?
- …. and feel free to add your questions :)
(*) Note: I was a member of the SEA-EAT team.