Thinking out loud: Is the PR blogosphere fragmenting?

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):

  1. 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?
  2. Are we (“the PR blogosphere”) a community? By what definition?
  3. Is Dunbar’s Number relevant for online communities? If it is, for what types of communities, and is the PR blogosphere such a community?
  4. What are the community indicators for the PR blogosphere?
  5. Is IAN a sign of fracture in the PR blogosphere?
  6. Is IAN the same type of meme-storm as the SEA-EAT Blog & Wiki (*) ? What are the similarities/differences?
  7. …. and feel free to add your questions :)
 

(*) Note: I was a member of the SEA-EAT team.