I’m a bit tired of talks of a so-called A-List, a supposed group of weblogs accused of grabbing all the popularity and traffic. Wanna know about a real closed society? In France where I live, old powerful families (for you Americans: I’m not talking about just five generations, but hundreds of years) still bear a lot of weight, even in the supposedly egalitarian "republican" (sic, we’re in the banana business) system. Comparatively, the blog community is as open as one can get.
As a personal note, thanks to Matthew for the nice mention. I don’t get that much traffic, but I do have a few faithful readers that tell me they like what they find here, and that alone is worthwhile.