@Sham: Haha thanks dude!

@Harro!: Thank you. I think the comment distinguishing between actual critiqes and frivolous opinions is key. As always, people who choose to view bloggers as “one size fits all” and think everyone is an influence or no one is an influence will be both worse of. The answer is somewhere in between and research has to be done to know who’s worth your time and who isn’t.

When Xiaxue decides that iPhone is bad for long fingernails, her community of 20K pick up the point and its a valid one for her 20K readers.

With practice, we will see the common person become a seasoned critique, opinion leader, as we see happenning through treats.sg, podfire, tech65 etc…

Why Singapore is behind the rest of the world is because opinions have been suppressed for a long time. At the end of the day a person/blogger has to decide whether or not he chooses to matter to the community.

If you keep silent, or have frivolous opinions, you can be sure that you no longer matter to companies, or the government and thus no one will listen to you.

Malaysia and especially China are very very vocal.

unless a blog is a locked one which only the writer has the password to, then i would say, every blog can have an influence on another person. and it can keep growing! it’s a pass-it-on thing. here’s why:

people who read ur blog regularly are people who can identify with you, or what u write. and some way or another, if they link to a post of urs, or to ur blog, someone else who reads them regularly will, at one point or another, start reading ur blog too, n linking to it. and there u have it. ur circle of influence has grown.

n u know, believe it or not, there are people out there who do count on ur opinion before making a decision themselves. i’m not just talking about products that u ‘promote’ on ur blog, but also about other people. like u mentioned, kenny linked u, n that’s important for his readers to actually evaluate u n say maybe, “oh, kenny thinks he’s worth reading, so he must be.” that forms the first impression of a reader who didn’t previously know u, n who is visiting ur blog for the first time. undoubtedly, with the recommendation of a blogger whom a reader can identify with, the linked blogger will have more credibility.

i admit that i have changed my opinion of someone based on whether my friends like that person or not. not completely, but of course, if someone i like or identify with dislikes that person, i will take a step back n think, hey, is this person really like that? maybe i shd re-evaluate him/her.

ok i’ve digressed. my point is this: ok. shit. i forgot what’s my point. (this happens often )

aiyah!! u know. things aren’t just that simple. u can’t just say “i have so few readers so i can’t be influencing someone.”

p/s: ur influence in the blogosphere has jus grown even more now, cos u’re constantly in top 10 on ping.sg! haha.