Dear CITASA list, I've been following the mostly online dialog about the "injustice" of the Huffington Post sale to AOL, and the fact that, since HuffPo made $315 million on the backs of many unpaid bloggers, this constitutes an inequitable act. For a good summary of the conversation, check out: http://blogs.forbes.com/frederickallen/2011/02/16/whats-really-behind-the-huffpo-revolt/ And also see a good post by Nate Silver of 538 crunching the numbers behind HuffPo revenues: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the-economics-of-blogging-and-the-huffington-post While there has been a good deal written about the motivations for blogging and the use of social media http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=motivations+for+blogging&as_sdt=1,33&as_ylo=2004&as_vis=0 I am wondering if there has been any actual research done on why anyone would blog for a particular *brand. *Ie, when you can just set yourself up on blogger for free, why blog with the Huffington Post? Obviously, I have many guesses why this might be so, but does anyone know if anyone has done actual research on this question? All the best, Chris -- C.W. Anderson, PhD (Communications), <http://www.cwanderson.org> Assistant Professor of Media Culture, College of Staten Island (CUNY) Visiting Fellow, Yale Information Society Project and blogger, Harvard Nieman Lab (http://bit.ly/V2xxa)