"Donahoo argues that bloggers are not as influential as they think".
He cannot know what I think.
Where is it written that bloggers have to be influential?.
The blog world is a more accurate measure of how people think than any poll could be, and you can safely bet money that political parties read blogs and that might be regarded as 'influence'.
This Forum is a blog so you all might as well go home now,
and because bloggers are a connected community and have offline group meetings, my coup de grace - IT'S A SOCIAL ACTIVITY, DUMMY.

I see blogging a bit like junk mail in the letterbox. Sometimes, I chuck it, sometimes I skim through it quickly and then chuck it and occasionally I pick up a good bargain. It is social and if someone wants to blog their patootie all over the net, so be it. A bit like the idiot box innit?

a pox on you donahoo. two of my blogger friends have closed down because your OPINION gave them enough doubt of themselves to quit.

male bloggers tend to rally round political issues, teenage bloggers tend to ramble about their aspirations and personal activities and their Links Lists are all their friend's blogs; but somewhere between those two ends, the middle ground has some interesting exchanges of ideas and influences in areas of literature, cinema and social issues. Similar to the newsagent's magazine racks - you may buy into the absolute rubbish Who Weekly, or get National Geographic and learn something.

I can see from the number of posts here, that your spiel leaves the crew here cold. Elsewhere, Adrianna Maxwell's opinion of Nicole Kidman has more than 75 comments.

THIS site is titled after all OPINION ONLINE, and if the blogger's opinion's don't matter, then neither does yours.

"Daniel Donahoo argues that blogging and bloggers are not as influential as they think."

If this is true, so why are Mr Donahoo and his partner seemingly waging war via comments on Brownies blog? Bizarre and completely contradictory behaviour for Mr Donahoo who views bloggers as "those who are just sad". Which begs the question, just why are the Donahoo's paying so much attention?

"The greatest influence that blogging is having, is on the nature of our human relationships."

Considering the Donahoo's recent comments, this quote could be read in context of quite another subtext.

Dear ‘world of blogs’ –

Influential or not, I appear to have made my mark on a small part of the blogosphere.

And amid the comments boxes and feedback loops I feel I have been taken somewhat out of context by the title that was given this piece…

I did not write the title to this piece, it was given by (I assume) the editor of sub editor who posted it. Nowhere else in the body of the text do I call bloggers sad. I actually don’t think they are.

What do I say?

I say that blogs, like other non-online aspects of our lives, are a call to be recognised. Like suicide, or joining a rock band, or auditioning for a reality TV show…this piece is more about the problems with the off-line world than the online world. I don’t think it is bad searching for your voice and wanting to be recognised. Hell, it is one of the reasons I write and try to get it published publicly.

I say that online relationships lack something real offline human relationships have. And, I think they do: touch, tone of voice, something intangible…just ask bloggers and chatters who have fallen in love and travelled the world to be together – they do it because we ultimately all want physical relationships not virtual ones.

I say blogging isn’t as influential as Tim Dunlop suggests.

To those who ask ‘who says blogs are influential’ – well the answer is Tim Dunlop, and a few others. It is a fair opinion, one I disagree with – but may be proved wrong. I agree with their idea that blogs help to make people more democratically engaged.

Thanks to a title I believe I have been taken out of context, but hey, that is how it goes. Re-read the piece. I don’t think I’m as harsh as I’ve been portrayed as being.

Though – I like gilly-san’s thoughts…I think they portray what I feel uneasy about in the blogging world.

I still think there's some of a false dichotomy persisting in your argument, Daniel. As a number of people said at my place, relationships formed online can often go offline. You may or may not be aware that there are frequent fora for bloggers to meet in person in most Australian cities and that many of us correspond by email and meet when we can.

As someone also remarked, can you walk down to your local pub and start a chat with random individuals about politics or culture? Probably not - there's every likelihood that they're not interested.

Even in places like academia, there's little discussion of ideas most of the time. A lot of academics prefer to talk about workplace gossip and intellectual one-up-personship. Conferences are often setpieces where "discussion" is about attention gaining and reinforcing deference and hierarchies. A huge number of people who participate in political blogs have remarked that it provides a source of intellectual stimulation not available to them otherwise.

There are also assumptions about where this f2f discussion takes place and its conditions of possibility. What about those who are shy, regionally isolated, ill or living with a disability? Again, the internet provides avenues for discussion and interchange where it's not so easy out there in the much vaunted "community" - where most of our relationships and interactions are increasingly instrumental anyway.

I also think that the whole thrust of the face to face presence is more meaningful argument is a weary one. It firstly ignores the fact that a lot of communication and sharing of ideas has always been mediated (for instance through the correspondence circles active in the Reformation and Renaissance between scholars and writers many of whom never met) and secondly ignores most of the sociological and psychological research on the positive effects of online sociality.

I've asked you to engage with that and you haven't.

It seems to me your main point is a sub-argument of the "social capital" debate, many of whose assumptions about declining sociality are themselves open to challenge.