Blogging tends to be a very serendipitous profession; often two seemingly unrelated items drop in your lap and you wonder how the rest of the world doesn't align properly as well.

Every so often a piece I'm writing kicks my butt. In blogging, there isn't the time to edit and polish as you would with a regular article, especially when you are covering a breaking story rather than reviewing something. But I'd been working on an online advertising piece that I couldn't get right. It was long, so I tried to split it up. Shorter articles made no sense without the other piece so I put them together. I mulled over my ideas with my husband until I felt I had it right. I was pretty pleased with the article when I finally finished it.

Today, reading Techmeme, I see a story featuring the same WSJ piece that originally set me off. And the story isn't so much of a story as a huge quote and a three-line response. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't frustrating. Not so much because I write any piece EVER expecting to make Techmeme (since I don't), but because I spent so much more time on it and did so much more analysis and a three-line response to a quote nets a mention.

Not to long after, I found a piece on a "mommy blog" that I read about politics in the blog world. And yesterday Allen Stern wrote about the popular people on Digg. So why is the Internet still such an extension of high school, even among the adults? Obviously, Allen and Stefanie are much more popular bloggers than I'll ever be. And yet even they can feel disenfranchised by the social hierarchy that exists every place online. Bloggers obviously wants some type of attention or they would keep their lights under their bushels and type only on their desktop. But why is it so hard for the big folks to spread even a little love among the little-knowns and let it trickle down.