Amazing.   Vindication about new media from an unexpected source ,yep the good old monolithic,  MSM. It's been a topic that I have had a really hard time selling, especially to those impressed by large numbers. that the social features that make a large network useful  oddly enough make smaller ones useful too. 

More so if your business happens to be aligned with the participants of that site. 

The idea that replicating a mass  a la  MSM  as it was  from the late 40's to 80's   is  quaint but   that's what gets the press  happy since size is easy to understand, big is a story. In ye olde rabbit eared worlde the only reason you needed X million people is that you were trying to hit your 300K  customers and there was no practical way of locating them. Now , we're fricking telling you who we are,  what we want  and if  the companies are smart enough to see that  it could work out  nicely.

Luckily most aren't and their ultimate downgrading and demise will be amusing. ( sadly this doesn't apply to the worst offenders that have secured real world monopolies  like cable and telcos but  I'm sure we can wait for the chief monopoly to morph into something a little more ethical.  ) 

CNN  has an article that highlighted the success of some smaller  social networks that are  based on a tighter connection than  having Internet access and  the desire to post discordant images/ sounds and camel case l337  lol cat missives on how much life sucks to be , well them.  Thankfully  there are people that can  back away  from the need to add sparkles to their photos   and the article discusses a few of them including athletes and knitters.

MySpace, Facebook: Big not always better - CNN.com

Like MySpace and Facebook, the free sites are largely generating revenue through advertising. As the larger sites struggle to capitalize on their diverse membership, the specialty sites believe they can offer advertisers a smaller, but passionate audience for which they'd be willing to pay more -- as much as 10 times more, Athlinks estimates.

I wish I had followed through for that MA is Mass Communications since I too would like to be quoted for stating the obvious.  Then again I saved a lot of money there because I would HOPE that my insight would have been improved to make  more than general statements  about people feeling overwhelmed by millions of people.   So that just makes me an idiot, rather than an educated one        Here's another old idiom.  Set a thief to catch a thief   could be updated to  you need a runner to catch a runner