I am still trying to sort this one out in my mind. I have even discussed it with Squire Locke, who often has a remarkable way of focusing what I am trying to sort out. In the early 90’s I ran a dial-up BBS - and sadly the Internet killed the BBS star. BB S’s were dial-in communities and a huge component on the BB S’s was a message area. Fido Net was the the key group of messages, having over 40,000 topic areas of discussion. Each BBS (and at one point there were 140,000+ around the world) would ‘carry’ the topic areas of interest in his or her BBS. Each BBS on PEI (there were less than 10) would pack up their message and call my BBS and deposit them at my system, and I would pack all of mine, plus theirs and send along to my hub in Moncton, who would do the same and pass along to his hub. At the same time, I would download his message bases and pass along to my nodes on PEI. ....and so on, and messages (conversations) would be passed around the world. I could be having a conversation in a topic area with someone who was on the opposite side of the earth, and the day or two delay created some interest and anticipation.
Blogs have created an instant exchange, with notifiers letting us know within mere seconds that the conversation continues. Yet we still have a small community in each blog. So what makes a community? What is the commonality that might make a blog community? It might be an aggregator of commonality (see 84 fitzroy) which certainly aggregates blogs that have have some common interest. My view of aggregators, is that they tend to remove the reader for the personality of the blog. I use aggregators , but only use them as notifiers which then triggers a visit to the actual site.
Squire Locke has suggested that perhaps there is nothing more to it than reading each other’s blogs. I am still struggling.