It was no different among the original amateur bloggers, whose creative energy once seemed inexhaustible. A common story line emerged: after posting away for some time, many began to notice that their pronouncements were reaching far fewer souls than they'd thought, perhaps based on an imperfect understanding of the web itself. Even trying to get more seemed hopeless: "If you do everything people tell you to do," one blogger lamented, "you can get up to about 100 visitors a day, but then it's like you hit an invisible wall."

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 966