Ghost of Midnight

Where there’s folk, there’s fire

That title is a clever quote from Britt Blaser’s latest post.  Thanks to David Weinberger for pointing in that direction.  Blaser writes:

The People Law trumps the Power Law.  There are five principles I’m playing with lately:
1. The size of your audience confers limited power
2. A network’s value is the square of its nodes (Metcalfe)
3. Network nodes are significant only when they’re verbose
4. Most conversation is among nearby nodes
5. Only interactions count, and the richest count most

I recommend a visit to check out the charts and graphs and his detail… good stuff.  Most of these points jibe with what we’re finding with Front Porch Forum.  E.g., under point three he states that the purpose of online social networking is face-to-face interaction.  That’s what Front Porch Forum is all about… and it works because the people on the online network by definition live in the same neighborhood.