Under this heading I thought I might examine individual websites here and there in order to tease out what it is people think they gain by posting up to the web.

Here (almost at random, but in fact in the course of a surf to find out something about Compeed plasters!) someone uses his for a combination of how he is developing his website, personal opinions, work and life, and psychotherapy. it is designed like a traditional multi-page website (a hypertext, in effect).

Because I am not tech-savvy enough, I have ended up with a flat structure of individual weblogs dealing with different topics. I would prefer what he has got. And as is common now, a side bar which catalogues previous posts under tags. Blogger is now doing this in the new version, but one niggle: when you convert from old Blogger to new, you lose the side links and have to manually cut and paste the HTML from new to old. Not too onerous, but why can't the complete site be transferred?

One of the key ideas discussed in the social network theory circles is the idea of altruism. What you do with your website (say, weblog) is links and content. Though links might be seen as content too (link=someone else's content). A greater proportion of weblogs are circumspect than all revealing. Identities are hidden and personal stories are described with key elements left out.

When you come across a website which seems to give everything away such the of the Bonta family via Via negativa which includes where they live , with a map and photos Plummer's Hollow one is immediately sure they are selling something as much as telling us about themselves! Though in their case it is a subtle blend of the two.

The difference between Bonta and D4D is miniscule: D4D doesn't say what his name is, provide a photo or give his address. But that is when miniscule can be quite large.