About the recent Web 2.0 Service Mark Controversy Tim O'Reilly writes:

The flap about the Web 2.0 Conference trademark has shaken my faith in the collective intelligence of the blogosphere. Of all the hundreds of people who commented on this issue, only a few touched base to do a bit of fact checking. The New York Times, by contrast, was all over doing due-diligence. They talked to everyone they could get their hands on before publishing their story.

It looks that while the blogoshere is growing at an amazing speed and the collective intelligence is not keeping up, getting diluted in the process. More and more people seem to be happy jumping from cluetrains to bandwagons. Apparently being part of the mob feels good, especially there are tomatoes (or sometimes stones) to throw at some very visible target.

Considering that we are social animals, this is a pretty logical evolution. I think that our challange is figuring out how to improve this on-line environment while it grows, still keeping all small pieces joined loosely.