In Henry Jenkins’s piece ‘Challenging the Consensus‘ (in response to Sunstein’s ‘The Daily We‘) Jenkins asks:

Is there any place on the Web where the whole world is watching? The Web is a billion people on a billion soapboxes all speaking at once with nobody listening.

I think he’s right - for now. I believe the internet has become an additional forum for people to talk on their soapboxes, which is a great thing, but I think that over time their will be more and more credible and consolidated places for people to get information, rant and rave, and share common web experiences. For instance look at Friendster, the Facebook, and Evite. They provide forums for people to get together - and stay together - through all the transitions and changes in life. I’m even in the process of setting up a Yahoo! Group for my family to have an easy way to send updates to each other.

While there may be a billion soapboxes out there right now…some boxes are slowly getting bigger than others.