Strangely, one of the main things that I try to shy away from, which is copy-pasting from various news sources, is the one thing that I like best about reading others' blogs.

In many cases you get the same story 100x. I can't tell you the number of times I have seen "Apple released....". But looking at more specialized blogs, i.e. venture capital or mobile phones, in the vast majority of cases I see articles or comments that I normally would have missed.

The value of the blogging ecosystem, as I understand it, is that blogs offer an alternative to mass media's watered-down reporting. Which is true in many cases. But it also fills in gaps for niche areas and provides a service that I couldn't get elsewhere (well, perhaps, but I would have to pay $$$).

At the same time, no one site fills in all the gaps. This is where the cumulative input from 50 different people acts as a collective conscience and gives a fuller picture of what's happening in the world. Maybe this should be known as borg-ing instead of blogging.

On that note, I thought I'd post a copy of my OPML file. I need to add many of these to my Recommended Reading list, but haven't. If anyone knows of VC blogs from London, or has other recommended sites, email me a jasonball at gmail dot com.
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Update

I found this graph over at Strategize. It looks like I'm one of the 79.7% of blog readers.