The PR industry will get more voices and more interesting content, when more people can be arsed to get involved. There are enough bright people with bright ideas. If they don’t want to join a conversation about meta tags for now, then that’s fine.

Let’s be honest. We all know about and have witnessed the “blog party” behavior Jenn posted about, and it does get unseemly at times. The fact that she won’t cite examples — Well, I view that as evidence of her civility. I was part of the blog party back when my site was a pup. I was trying to cultivate contacts and, you know, fit in. I still do what may look like “link love” from time to time, but only when I think my readers (most of them NOT bloggers) will find the content interesting and useful.

I once lusted for links. Today I don’t give a rat’s behind. But then again, I’m not selling anything. I’m just writing stuff.

Love the list, Brendan.

I do think something like the rankings could potentially make you a target for courting – even though I don’t care for blog rankings in general because of the lack of meaningful metrics, I do know that others feel differently and do care about their rankings here, there, and everywhere so they’ll have something to feed their egos and “show off.” I would sincerely hope though that you would be able to tell the difference between someone wanting to build a real friendship with you as a blogger and “communities” of the favor-trading variety.

I agree that there are lots of great bloggers out there. I’d rather talk about them than bad bloggers, and about great communities rather than small cliques.

So, fair enough: to throw out the word ‘bullying’ may have been a loaded word. But by the same token, be careful about proscribing activities. Let people experiment/ play/ copy/ adopt/ adapt/ improve, even if you think you’ve seen it all before.

Not sure why you (or anyone else) would expect her to provide a specific example; *that* could/would be online censure/bullying and (of course) merely her subjective opinion as to the worst offenders. Jenn made some general observations about the prevalence of narrowcast group-think, fawnish linklove and link-baiting, calculated gaming, etc.

If you read her post carefully, you’ll see that Jenn encourages independent, original and critical thought/assessment. Plus she encourages one to test theories and gut instincts against different types of people, instead of remaining in your own comfort zone (or PR blog party or clique or “community”).

If you are so inclined, test your own practices against her observations. Only you know what your genuine motivations are to “build a community” and what shape/form it has or might take. In the online (so-called PR blogs) world I find “community” to be pretty amorphous, anyhow. A blogger who I valued having a relationship with a year or two ago might have disappointed me in the ensuring time as one of the PR Blog Party peeps, so I’ve moved on.

The good news is that there are *so many* new and (more) interesting bloggers to meet, from around the world. So, your world has the potential to enlarge, rather than shrink in the mediocre pool of the best date past-due crowd. Good luck on your journeys.

I see lots of new bloggers writing lots of good stuff; in fact, most of the best stuff I read is from newer blogs. Not necessarily PR blogs — most of those suck, new or old. These days, I prefer blogs by individuals about their real passions, wherever they may lead, unconstrained by category limitations. Not blogs with topics and keywords that are neatly designed to attract new clients.

Of course, by virtue of the Web 2.0 hysteria of the past year or two, newer bloggers are more likely to have gotten into it for financial reasons (or as they say on The Bachelor, which my wife still makes me watch, the “wrong reasons”), whereas we KNOW that folks who’ve been blogging as long as Kevin Dugan and Jeremy Pepper started for other reasons … just cause they’re weird or whatever.

Anyhow, most of my criticism is reserved for people who are satisfied with Groundhogs Day content — be they new or old. I’m amazed they can get up and keep writing the same shit every day.

In other words, what’s the difference between a clique, and a community? I’d like to see examples so I’ll know what to avoid doing – or participating in – for the future!