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I only want one auction site - otherwise I have to list my items on several.
I only want one bookshop - otherwise I have to search and compare, so long as it is competitive, which it is.
I only want one encyclopaedia, otherwise I have to look across several, so long as it is reasonably accurate.
I only want one social networking site, otherwise my friends might be on other ones, so long as I can control my privacy.

For where you have things that join people together for a purpose (sharing knowledge, buying/selling) it works best if there's only one. The one that emerges is generally pretty good, otherwise we'd be flocking elsewhere. Is that a problem though?

However it's interesting that there is far from one bulletin board/discussion forum/chat room site. In the old days there used to be one - USENET - but that doesn't scale. Imagine if all 10,000 amateur photographers (I made that number up) joined uk.rec.photography and posted one thing a year - that would be thirty posts a day to wade through, let alone to respond to.

Instead USENET lives on as google groups, but we also have Yahoo groups, and then what must be a million or so sites with discussion forums. It's interesting to me that on almost every discussion forum I see, whether it's Genesis fans, UK cable customers, .NET programmers, there's an "off topic" area. Because wherever people with an interest in X gather they also want to discuss general stuff.

People generally do follow the herd; why else do people queue for Ikea at weekends, take their kids for Happy Meals, rent videos from Blockbusters, eat at Pizza Hut, take package holidays to the same resorts the Med, drink at Weatherspoons pubs, dance to the same tracks and so on?

Successful businesses also tend to have arrived at a formula that works well for most when dealing with volume traffic. Why be surprised that the web is any different?

Of course there are also people that like to be different or just have different tastes and interests. I guess they also use some mass market services when it suits, but also are prepared to be more adventurous; but by definition they will be a minority.

This is partly what I meant when I compared the internet to Usain Bolt and surfers to the crisp-eating audience in the stands. It's usually fairly obvious when someone does something exceptionally well: Google became popular because of its clear GUI and ease of use. It got from A to B quicker and with less effort than anyone else - rather like Usain Bolt - and the audience inevitably followed. Google was, and is, efficient for the everyday surfer who knows full well that there are other search engines but none that are as quick and easy to use.

There's also the corporate aspect you mention. It's inevitable that corporations, whether traditional companies moving from real-life shops and factories, or companies springing from the rise of the internet itself, will make their presence felt online due to the scale of their publicity budgets and, in the case of purely digital content, the low cost of delivery. The difference is the exclusion factor: walk down a high street and you will see shops competing for the same customers; surf the net and you will see only what you're looking at. Go to Amazon and that's all you'll see - you can't look over your shoulder at the store across the street. Wikipedia doesn't have too many competitors providing alternative "facts", histories and theories.

We know that the world is a round rock floating in space but we don't know that from direct experience. Similarly, we can comprehend the internet but we can't experience it in its entirety: it's too vast, too unknowable and growing too fast. It's very difficult to predict how it will change human behaviour over the next century, but it will provide plenty of statistics with which to analyse that behaviour. In many ways, adapting to the net will become like weather forecasting, in which an extrapolation of past clusters of clicks will allow one to state that something will ...probably happen. Such is the scale of the net it is inevitable that clouds, herds, mobs, call them what you like, will band together and move in one direction, rather like a weather system. Democracy works like that, if you recall. So does business. Conglomerates and politicians will assume the same roles online as they do in real life, the only difference being that the net will allow people to carve their own niche, however small, in cyberspace - until access to the net becomes fully commercialised.

Watch out for that commercial control of the net, by the way. It's not enough to pay for your internet access - give it a few years and users might have to pay an extra fee for access to a high-speed net or to a geographical area. Some people, including the British government, say that broadband is a necessity. We'll see. Clean water and enough food are true necessities, yet hundreds of millions of people don't have them. I'll go out on a limb and say that that last sentence is the single most important and shameful fact in this whole debate about the digital revolution, and it'll be the one global aspect that will be ignored by people tapping into their laptops in coffee shops from Anchorage to Adelaide. Call it the herd mentality, Mr Barnes, but don't call it social darwinism. It's just Darwinism, red in tooth and caffeine. The winner-takes-all nature of the web is merely a reflection of ruthless evolution at work. In my more cheerful moments, I like to think that the same energy and ingenuity that creates the better type of "flashmob" could drive the net to bigger and better things for the common good. Today, dance routines in railway stations; tomorrow, a helping hand for those in need.

End of homily.

I use the internet as it suits me. I use Facebook because some of my friends are on there and I can get all nostalgic and view photo's from the 80s when we had more hair and no beer bellies, but some of my other friends/family won't touch it with a barge pole. Some of these non-users get very annoyed by the fact that if they want to see someone's photos on Facebook they have to join the site to view them. I don't spend hours and hours on it like an obsessive, but I do find aspects of it useful.

I've found much more interesting sites than Facebook. I find that 'being part of the crowd' is useful sometimes - you know where people that you want to communicate with are - these are often more specialist social sites and have members who are interested in what you are interested in too and aren't just sitting in front of a PC saying 'I've just had beans for my tea' or 'I'm staring vacantly out of the window because I'm in love with the girl on the bus and I can't do any work.' These networks help bring people with specialist interests together, rather than having them sitting alone in their own isolated world. Even with the specialist social networks you don't have to follow the crowd - you can have your own opinions and as long as you aren't abusive or rude most people will accept that your opinion might be different.

I must admit I've followed the crowd in some cases eg Facebook; Flickr; Youtube - but I only use these sites when they can offer me something that meets my needs - whether that's social or research. On some popular sites I've been asked to join petitions about various things and I just ignore them. However, I know other people who should know better have just signed them because everybody else has signed. One of the big problems is taking whatever you read on the internet (or in the papers, or see/hear on the TV) as gospel truth.

I only go with the crowd when it suits me and then if I don't want to follow any more I just leave the site/discussion.

I understand your comment about the supposed Youtube 'internet gold' videos, but sometimes they are of interest to me. Sometimes I look at things people have sent me and think 'Why have I been sent this rubbish? Don't they know me?' I'm not interested in whether a cat can haz cheezeburger or if someone has dressed their baby up in an Anne Geddes fairy costume!!! but if I'm sent a mashup of Star Wars and gangster film and it's been put together really well and is very funny, I appreciate it - despite the fact that I didn't ask for it. I may not have found it otherwise.