Ross Mayfield is talking ahout the Social Capital of Blogspace and offers a nice set of concentric circles to illustrate the different characteristics of networks spanning outwards from the individual, through the creative network and social network to the wider political network
Mayfield’s diagram shows the different “laws” that apply to the development of social capital at each level, the scale and mode of online communication involved
Elsewhere, by coincidence, Jon Udell is also doing the concentric circles thing in Blogs, scopes, and human routers, but he is also thinking about boundaries and overlaps between groups. This touches on the role of bridges in social network analysis, which I have been thinking about a lot lately thanks to people like Ronald Burt.