Networks Upon Networks!

In July I cobbled together a list of the science bloggers who had decided to pull up stakes and leave scienceblogs.com because of a dispute over a blog written by Pepsi. I started the list out of sympathy for bloggers who risk losing lots of readers as they move off the Google radar, expecting that they'd move out of the big scienceblogs city to build a little sod house of their own on the Wordpress prairie. But to my surprise, a lot of them have moved into other blog networks, or created new ones of their own, like cities rising from the wasteland. (Mix, my little metaphors, mix!) For example, some have just moved over to BigThink while others have joined new networks such as ScientopiaThe Guardian Science Blogs and, just this moment, PLoS blogs It's doubly intriguing to me. Why is there such an enthusiasm for setting up or expanding science blog networks right now? And why have bloggers who were burned by a network decided to join a new one?