Ralph Brandi reminds us (in light of AOL Journals) that here are differences between the blog world of today and USENET of ten years ago:
Blogistan is already much larger than any one person or cabal can get their heads around. There are hundreds of thousands of Blogspot weblogs, Radio weblogs, and LiveJournals that are maintained by people who already have no idea who Jeff Jarvis, Meg Hourihan, Nick Denton, Anil Dash, and Clay Shirky are.
He points out, the two “social software” platforms have very different architecture. USENET and other BBS-type faciltiies are topic-centric, whereas weblogs are person-centric, and that the ties that bind blog threads together are still fairly weak:
It’s very easy to ignore people you don’t know in Blogistan; in fact, it’s the default. If you don’t know about a blog, you can’t read it. Shelley hopes the introduction of AOLers into Blogistan will lead to “complete and utter anarchy”. But that’s what we’ve already got.