I’ve always been such an outsider that I’ve been forced over time to enumerate benefits of outsiderdom, and I think I prefer it. Outsiders can be incognito, sneak in and out of places and up to people. Outsiders get to observe without becoming observed. Outsiders get to be more innovative, often out of necessity, but also because they have less to lose (as Avis says “#2 tries harder.”)

It helps that I love to be where the action is but hate hate HATE being the center of attention. YeeeUCK. There could be a self-sabatoge effect of preferring outsider status, I should probably look into that.

(not you Julie, just bloggers in general)

I loved this thread; actually, all of my recent thoughts have mirrored yours…or are yours mirroring mine? This is part of the circuitous, female nature of blogs, maybe. We think, therefore I blog, as it were.

Thanks.

Weblogs are still new, and I think Anil Dash’s analysis of the blog cycle shows it:

http://www.dashes.com/anil/2005/03/21/the_blog_cycle

But in the end, weblogs are just another way for people to communicate, and when we communicate, we include and exclude—or perceive inclusion and exclusion even when it’s not quite what we think.

For every person who thinks they are not “in” or “included” there is someone else who thinks that that person is “in” or “included” and they are the one who is not “in” or “included”

Perceptions are weird that way…

I would think this is strong confirmation of the problem of imbalances of power, not that “”In” and “out” are illusions”.

You seem to be saying, as much as I can make out your chain of reasoning:
“This great person, who I *think* should be “in”, feels “out” – THEREFORE, there’s no such thing as “in or “out”, BECAUSE I assume she would be “in”, so the concept must be meaningless”.

I suggest to you that the concept is quite meaningful. Rather, the flaw in your reasoning is in the assumption that she would be “in”. Being first does not necessarily guarantee success – just ask Netscape. For any subject, there’s a tiny, tiny, handful of position of power, so in fact almost *everyone* discussing the subject is indeed an outsider in that sense.

And if someone wants to be heard beyond chatting to their small circle of friends, they almost certainly *do* have to suck up to the cool kids. Otherwise, they’ll be told how wonderful it is that an extensive search might someday turn up their page.

The point I would make back to you is this. Unlike high school, we can to some extent sashay about between communities in the blogosphere. Sometimes we can wander into communities by accident. That’s how I got to Shelley’s blog in the first place.

So, oddly for an extreme information consumer like myself, the blogosphere is breeding diversity.

It is easy to think of blogging along the same lines as television, or newspapers. In those worlds, the few prosper while the fringe voices fall away.

But the real power of blogging is in the diversity of voices that are “out there”. We should remember why we blog in the first place. And for each of us, I imagine the reasons are as unique as we are.

Blogging can be powerful when you consider your voice is available to anyone in the world who can go online and search your words out.

It can be equally disconcerting when you consider that with any medium only the top few percent of the “streams” become the most consumed.

With all of the visual forms of entertainment and information in the world – none are consumed by as many people as network television. It is almost odd when a network executive laments that a show *only* gets 3 million viewers or the like.

By comparison, blogging costs next to nothing. It stays “out there” as long as you like, if not longer… and is immediate and personal.

The power is not in the numbers of links or readers, not in any one voice, but in participating in a global conversation.