Many of us who blog (as I do here), and maintain presences on other social media (see my About.me profile), live quite openly online. We share our opinions with whoever wants to ‘listen’ to our multiple streams across various social media. However, bloggers/tweeters/blippers do not know exactly who is ‘listening’ to them, nor why the ‘listeners’ are engaged in the ‘listening’. Of course, on some platforms, such as WordPress, we can track our hits, monitor the routes that people take to reach our content, and watch click-through statistics. We also develop relationships with others who comment on our posts frequently and directly. But what of the others who listen but leave no trail?

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