Comments seem to be broken here, so I’m replying to danah’s existential post here.

Wrestling with the same issue, I’ve found it’s difficult to decide what to contribute here, because topics are being commercially exhausted. We went through a period where new companies and products were passed on as news, in between well thought-out posts. The job of covering social software news started being done by others elsewhere. As we enaged deeper in out own kind of ventures, this effort was well appreciated. We also found less that was really new to report. The bar was set pretty high for the well thought-out pieces, almost introducing a formality for contribution, that in busy times couldn’t be met.

But with the whole Web 2.0 thing, it may be more important than ever.

What was unique about social software and it’s design principles was how it didn’t emphasize tools, but practice and an understanding of social context. Too much of Web 2.0 is not just made of white people, but an alphabet soup of supporting technologies that mean nothing without communities, networks and even real business models. As the market we helped found continues to froth, commentary on new business models based on power laws matters even more.

But the real reason I haven’t been contributing as much as I used to is because we forbade MMOGs in the topic, and I’ve been playing too much World of Warcraft.