Slight OT (off topic), but this may be a nice example amongst our group of "social media as it happens."  I just wrote a blog post about President Obama's peace prize on the group blog I'm part of, Crooked Timber. I predict it will have 100 comments by the end of the day. Why? - it's in English and about American politics.

The international aspect I wrote about probably won't get much play. - it's highly current, i.e. about a topic everyone has an opinion on and is pretty excited about. - I won Timezone Bingo by being in Europe when the news was announced, and blogged about this just before the US east coast woke up, slurped its coffee and checked the blogs.

The real question: so what? Does it matter that a rapid discussion will happen about a current topic on a slightly high-end English language blog? What's the value of this, if any? I do this stuff all the time and I can't even say. I've name-checked our meeting in the post, so we may get some more traffic today than we might otherwise have. Beyond that, I can't say what it's worth or what it means...