DISQUS

>Is it so that each blog with great content can slowly accumulate readers till it hits a critical mass and becomes an authority? Or is it so that at the start of a niche, when there are no authority sites yet, several arise and once they have a monopoly they stay there?

I think it's a bit of both. RSS feeds give a major advantage to early players, but sites like Reddit give newcomers (like me) a chance.

The main "problem" however is the narrowness of categorization in most social networking site. If a great article doesn't fit on the the reddit groups the "purity police" will vote it into oblivion. It's high time that agregators like reddit should start agregating their own groups. i.e. the "visual basic", "PHP" and "Ruby" groups should by automatically merge to form "Programming" which should merge into "Software" etc. Articles should be submitted at the lowest leaf node and propogate upward with voting at all levels.

Excellent post. These concepts apply to almost any endevour in life. For me I think #3 is the hardest. It's easier to go off and do something safe and live with the myth of infallability than to try and have the myth wiped away. Thanks for the great thoughts.