Riki Thinks: Reading; "Blogging" and your paper

Jill Walker Rettberg's book Blogging gives you a very general overlook of the process of making and maintaining a blog.  For the most part, I have had a bit of trouble finding a lot of information that could refitted for use in my research paper.  That being said, as the paper is on blogs, and the book is about blogging, there are a few sections that I can relate to.  The section I thought I could most relate to comes on under the heading of 'Social Network Theory' (59) and discusses the idea that 'weak ties' (such as those that might exist between a blogger and the person he has never met who just happens to be reading his blog) are more effective at introducing new information than the 'strong ties' you have with your close friends.  I found this interesting because this is exactly what we are doing with this paper, forming weak ties with various bloggers and gaining what new information from it.  This information will then be presented to the class (what you might call a strong tie?) and allow new information to enter the group.  Funny how that works out eh?  Another thing they mentioned (and I mention simply because it is legit, although possibly out-dated and flat wrong) is the 'Small world' experiments preformed in the 1960's.  Rettberg goes on to say how links on a bloggers site signify connections with others, helping to bridge between people. Interesting stuff...