Une analyse communautaire non passionnee sur Ublog

Très intéressante analyse (malheureusement uniquement en anglais) de ce qui se passe entre certains Ublogueurs "historiques" et la direction de Typepad.com ; extraits de ce billet de Horst sur son blog : From community to business. Elle montre comment une communauté de personnes désire "impacter" sur l'avenir d'un outil qu'elle ne possède pas en interagissant via une action, qui, pour l'instant, se situe uniquement en ligne :

"It is interesting to see how weblogging seems to be stuck somewhere in the middle between being something of a grassroots movement and serious business, with an endless number of intermediate shades of gray.
It's interesting in that it creates financial opportunities for some bloggers who'd never thought about it, but it can also create serious conflict if the business side of weblogs imposes itself (or is imposed) too harshly on a community of unsuspecting, non-business-oriented webloggers.
(...)
The question here is not really as to how much Loïc Le Meur is to blame (actually, I don't think he is, as far as I can see he is merely acting like a businessman), but rather how comfortable we feel about the fact that weblogging is turning from a community phenomenon into a business.
Loïc didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do ? he bought the company, and it's his right to change the terms of use. The interesting thing in the reactions of the webloggers at U-blog really is how they seem to feel that it is them who actually own the company, and how they feel betrayed by the person officially in charge.
But then, they may be forming the community, but they don't own the business. In their perception, however, they were degraded from active citizens to passive customers. They could switch to a new weblogging host, but instead of merely becoming customers of another business, it seems to feel like emigrating from their former home country to some unknown territory (...)."