I tried to be a ski bum when I stepped away from Twitter, and I wasn't a very good skier.
A key element of Web blogs is the community element. Most blogs are not self-contained; they are highly dependent on linking to each other.
People want to do good things, they just need a prod sometimes, and what Twitter and other technologies that connect people are showing us is that if you make it a little easier for people then you will enable them to do what they want to do, to help people out, to form groups and do good.
'Vanity pages,' is somewhat of a derogatory term; personal pages are still the heart of blogging, but now there are more topic-oriented blogs. It's really about personal expression, and that's just gotten bigger and broader.
Google started out when the dot-com boom was happening. It grew under the radar of big companies that were competing in but basically ignoring search. Then they were able to really invest during the bust for a long time.
