I’m betting there must be some kind of mathematical model that describes the clumping of users within blogging communities such as WordPress and Tumblr, and I bet it works in a similar way to the same phenomenon elsewhere in the natural world.
People make real world bonds because of geographical location - work, children, schools, and so on. Social networks are theoretically more broad - because distance isn’t part of the equation - but they don’t account for two things; laziness, and artificial constraints.
Firstly, we are all lazy. We don’t make a habit of heading out in search of new friends, because building relationships is hard work - doubly so online because so many people construct such perfect false representations of themselves.
Secondly, social or blogging networks make the discovery of new people more difficult than it might be. The simple addition of a profile page where interests, or popular culture tags might be harvested is typically not provided - we are therefore left to process each other’s content. It’s hard work - we don’t bother.
We therefore follow each other incestuously. Small communities form. All because we are too lazy to step outside our front door, and head out into the world.
I know several people in the real world who have started writing a blog after seeing mine - filled with hope and enthusiasm. Without exception they have all given up within days because they were too lazy to bootstrap their community of online friends.
What am I saying ?
Perhaps that those of us who have been around for years, writing, chatting, commenting, posting, thinking aloud, joking, laughing, arguing, and supporting should sometimes look out for the newcomers, or give them an “in” to our circles of online friends.
It’s just a thought.