Is it the blog or is it the network?

The big liberal blogs (Atrios, DailyKos) recently did a blogroll purge. (A blogroll is the list of links to other blogs that e.g., I have to the left of my page). That lead to this beautiful rant which boths serves to draw attention, but also obscure the question - is dailykos important on its own, or is it important as a supernode in a network of progressive blogs?

A blog linked from a supernode often gets more attention than it would otherwise. More subtle is the feedback that strengthens the supernode.

We'll surely find out in some time whether the big blogs have destroyed the ecosystem that made them influential in the first place.