Originally posted by uzlessSorry to come to this debate late.
These collectors believe that the popular people on a site are the same people that are the trend setters in real life.
When I was a member of the Crewe Alexandra message board a lot of the regular contributors met up for a beer once.
It struck me that the ones who were more vocal and confident in the forum were the most socially inept in real life, and the ones who were roasted online for being forum 'weeds' were generally the ones who'd done better out of life away from a PC.
I don't think it follows that people more active on websites are those who are likely to set trends.
If the marketers are following this it might explain why the economic powers that be have made such a mess of things more generally.