Hey Gang, welcome to a very special edition of Whiteboard Friday.  Why is it special? A couple of reasons: First, Rand's discussing one of his favorite topics, blogging, and second, we decided to get a little crazy this week...you'll see what I mean when you watch the video.

Apart from the ridiculous theatrics, Rand discusses why it's important for bloggers to try and make friends and influence people.  The blogosphere is actually a very close approximation of traditional social networks, with small, tight-knit groups of individuals who influence, feed off of, and generally agree with each other.  Niche blogs and blog micro-communities function almost identically, reinforcing their own ideas and maintaining a comfortable, if isolated position.

source: the Network Weaving Blog

Pull out to a wider view though, and you start to see how those small niches could gain much more influence, participation and perspective if they did some outreach to more well-connected sites and communities.

Political blogs are a great example: there are blogs, both big and small, on the left and the right, and they are numerous. However, the largest audience and the most influential blogs are those in the middle.  By reaching out to those centrist blogs and communities, even fringe bloggers can help to increase their footprint in the overall arena.

Beyond the landscape of blog communities and participation, Rand goes on to discuss several tactics bloggers can use to make themselves better connected within the social graph. He'll also discuss some of the primary benefits and rewards that can come from a little community outreach effort.

Enjoy!

For those who are interested, here are a couple of articles related to the psychology of blog niches and the associated social geography:

• Washington Post on the isolation of Political Blogs
• A similar article from the New York Times
• Network Weaving on the  problems with fractured communities
• New York Times on how social geography can lead to innovation

Also, ReadWriteWeb did an excellent overview of the technicalities of the social graph, for those who want to delve deeper.