Sometimes someone just nails it. Doc Searls did in this piece on Building vs. Buzz. He builds on Dave Winer's piece Creating a maintainable and thriving web. He also nails it.
But the blogs, who aren't trying to climb the top 100 lists, are doing something else. We're just trying to share information with each other so we can learn, so we can use stuff better, make better choices, improve the products, and eventually create new products.
I like to think that anyone can create buzz or hype. The only problem with that is that it is too true and that the large volume of buzz generated makes so much damn noise it makes it difficult to focus beyond it, unless you've got some discipline.
