Ann Althouse is an influential blogger, one of the top few non-profit blogs going. Her blog is filled with very good photography and an eclectic combination of posts. She teaches constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin and is frequently a contributor to the New York Times op-ed. In short, she is something of a celeb.
Going back half a dozen years or so, the blog opened with participants who came by mainly from her legal circle. It was popular as blogs go and you had to have something of an "A GAME" going/writing or you lost your head to the sharper wits and fact checkers. who blogged there. In the midst of this, Ann took a year and taught at the Brooklyn College of Law, op-ed'd for the Times and started to really gain national attention. It was fun to write there.... a test so to speak and I for one learned a lot about not only fact checking which I am pretty good at and arguing without resorting to "hey you pinhead where's your brain" introductory clauses. Political season was among us and the debates were sharp and reasoned and frankly a lot more enlightening than anything seen on TV.Near the election time, an unusual transformation came about. The right wing finally discovered the power that blogging has and the forum it provides. Power in that if you blog a lot and in enough places you start to turn up on natural search. For instance if you do a keyword search for HDHouse you get me and the high definition house for flatscreens. If you do HDHouse and "liberal" I got 20 pages deep. (you should do my name and add Cheney or Ya'betch! or Palin or Bush ..well you get the idea). You can, therefore influence natural search.
If there are enough of you doing it things get out of hand pretty quick and on the Althouse blog, things have. The blog has morphed to a "red meat" forum for conservatives and Ann has changed what she has dangled out on a daily basis to curry favor with what is now the vast majority of participants on her blog. The left side of the aisle is down to less than a handful and the right plays "shout down" - some reasoned and some tin foil hats - no matter.