Somehow I missed Jon Udell's piece "the future of online community" last week:

What's broken, for me, is the idea that an online community is a place where people gather, and a centralized repository of the discussions held in that place. In that model, I've concluded, the costs are just too high. It's expensive to join. It's expensive to participate, because interactive discussion demands a lot of attention. And it's expensive to leave, because the repository has your data

The weblog model indeed reduces Jon's costs. But there's still a barrier to entry, whether it's in technical knowhow or just in the willingness (or rash brashness) to commit trivia aloud.

Prerequisite: move control down to the user. Some time - the sooner the better - I'll have to ditch this webserver (or at least make it less central), put my weblog onto my laptop and home PC (and share my photos from the same place). I'm thinking of maybe doing that with GWS. That way I can bridge the modalities (googler, occasional visitor, regular, correspondent, collaborator, friend).

Any suggestions how?