I've been a part of the South African blogosphere for about 2 years now. It is still a very young blogosphere by global standards and is fighting hard to establish itself. There are some insanely clever people playing in this space and I am proud to be playing amongst them. As I look back on the last two years it seems to be me that the SA blogging movement has been moving in the same direction - towards establishing a significant presence in the global blogosphere boosted by innovative thinking and relevant content.

Within the past few months, pretty much since 2007 began, I have however begun noticing a change in this story. There is now a level of dissent within the SA blogging community that I have not seen before - and it has revolved mainly around the annual SA blog awards, and to some extent around the "lets-meet" gatherings that have been organized by some prominent bloggers (to read some what this looks like click here, here, here and finally, here)

There are three observations/recommendations that I have about this situation:

• This could be beginnings of a rebellious cancerous trend that begins to eat away and destroy the blogosphere - or at least begins to create an unintentionally uninviting environment where new bloggers, new content and a new direction are thwarted.
• I think it was Charles Handy who spoke of the 3 stages of community: first, a community forms and establishes pseudo-community, then a conflict/crisis arises and depending on the way things go, the community could revert back to pseudo-community or move into true community where conflict, tension, peace, trust and loyalty are held in balance. And so, in terms of the SA blogosphere, this dissent could be a marker of a natural stage of community development that beckons the blogosphere to move beyond the niceties of pseudo-community where conflict and dissent are kept under wraps, towards a true sense of community.
• From a narrative plot perspective, this stage of dissent could represent the heightening tension of a plot that is about to climax and resolve this chapter of the SA blogosphere's story.

Which way will it go SA blogosphere?