Blog networks are hot. . . ever since weblogsinc got bought by AOL the idea of blog networks have spread beyond the “professionals” into the casual bloggers segement. Sure there had always been BoingBoing, Gawker, Corante, even the9; but today everyone and their mom are either starting their own blog network, joining one, or being invited to one. (I won’t name names here)

This was certainly inevitable ever since main stream media started publishing top xxx blog lists. A few people realized what was happening like, Fred Wilson, and asked to be taken off those lists. Other’s however, saw an opportunity to get famous or make some money. Many on those lists are leveraging their notoriety as “anchor” blogs and starting their own networks. Those left off, are joining together hoping to gain critical mass in numbers. (BTW Google’s PageRank is one of the implicit drivers of the trend).

The emergence of a blog hierarchy, be it single destinations or networks is not a good thing. It feeds the ego of bloggers and destroys the democratic nature and voice of the blogosphere. Perhaps I’m being naïve as there was never such a thing (see blog mobs). But I don’t see a good ending for the scene in general.

A long long time ago, as a teenager, I was involved (peripherally) in another “scene.” An underground PC hacking counter culture sometimes called the “scene” or “elite.” The scene first started out as bunch of kids distributing and cracking games where copy protection had been removed. The community (the better word for it) at the time was pretty haphazard (like the blogosphere was 12 month ago) and certainly amateurish. There were “groups” of hackers with their BBS’ but no one dominated the scene. That all changed when “The Humble Guys” arrived. No longer a community of teenagers looking for a free copy of Leisure Suit Larry, these guys were adults (almost ) who had risen/grown up with the scene and taken a elitist and professional attitude to what was before a hobby and passion. There were money to be made in the ecosystems of cracking and distributing illegal software. All of which fed off the ego of the community to be cooler and better than others. The software remained free, but you can now pay to join a group, pay to be a distribution BBS for a crack group, pay to run your BBS on the latest version of Vision or LSD, etc, etc.

Pretty soon, seeing the power and money making ability of The Humble Guys, other imitators popped up like Razor 1911, iNC, Fairlight, USA, and others. A hierarchy was quickly established and the scene bifurcated significantly. You are either a “consumer” or part of the “management.” More specifically, people are either involved in the publication of software (analogous to blog creators) or people who downloaded (readers). There was no middle ground. You were either “elite” or “lame.”

There was almost no point starting your own BBS (think blogs) because there is no support system for you to get started unless you belong to a major group or have a network of BBS to drive you traffic (dialers). But of course, you can’t join one unless you run your own BBS and build up a good reputation and user base. The catch-22 eventually drove the downsizing of the community. The resulting apathy, the rise of the internet, movement away from copy protection, secret service crack down, and p2p file trading all helped reduce what was once a very vibrant community.

Of course the pc hacking scene is not even a close analogy to the blogosphere today . . . but there are lessons to be learned. Once any community has a huge peer asymmetry between producers and consumers, its network value decreases and a vicious rather than virtuous cycle emerges driving down the incentive of joining such a community. I hope this I not the beginning of the end. I once got apathetic and left the “scene 1.0” (plus chasing skirts became more fun ), I hope this is not the case for the “scene 2.0.”

I always wondered what happened to those guys, and where they are today (those that did not get arrested!). Did Paul Allen become Fabulous Furlough after leaving MSFT? (not likely ) Did any of them become hugely successful entrepreneurs? Are they running around the valley today knee deep in the tech industry? The blogosphere even? Better yet, are there any BBS’s left? Would love to fire up my modem and Procomm, dial around and re-live the wild wild west again. I could even load up theDraw and pull out some ANSI artskills I’ve hidden away for over 10 years. . .