New media has been given a more central role in the BBC by director general Mark Thompson. A new division, called Future Media and Technology, is to be created and led by current director Ashley Highfield.

Clay Shirky revisits the controversial discussion of blog popularity and the power law effect and finds much the same: “The basic truth of such ranking systems is unchanged: for you to win, someone else must lose, because rank is a differential. Furthermore, in this particular system, the larger the blogsphere grows, the greater the inequality will be between being the most- and median-trafficked weblog.” Adds Clay: “In February of 2009, I expect far more than the Top 10 to be dominated by professional, group efforts. The most popular blogs are no longer quirky or idiosyncratic individual voices; hard work by committed groups beats individuals working in their spare time for generating and keeping an audience.”