In early October, Red Herring featured Dogster, Inc. extensively to exemplify how niche networking sites are inheriting the web. We prefer the term passion-centric sites, but kudos to Red Herring and author Alisa Weinstein for seeing this first. However, the word’s getting around.

Then, earlier this month, I was quoted as a reference in both the Wall Street Journal and San Francisco Chronicle. The Chron queried me on the state and future of social networking and the WSJ wanted to understand Michael Arrington and the merits of his status as a power broker.

Ellen Lee’s article in the Chronicle was a refreshing look at the fact that social networks are dynamic evolving communities that mean different things to different people at different times in their life. We have a lot of members that say they enjoy the safer confines of our site compared to their old communities and we also have members that say once their first born arrived they didn’t have time anymore. But that’s fine because we also have members who say that now that their children are grown they are so happy they have our sites. A community that is always changing is a healthy place. Otherwise it’s stagnating.

Ellen also did a good job of quoting me verbatim. I’m very pleased to be on record saying both of the following.

“I think it’s [the current state of social networking] been both overhyped and underestimated …. but in the end it is going to be so much bigger than what people are seeing now.”

“You can bring a person to a Web site, but you can’t make them click.”

In Rebecca Buckman’s and Vauhini Vara’s WSJ exposé, I explained how doing something different with passion allowed us to gain the respect of an early, important proponent of ours, Michael Arrington. (Full disclosure: a year later Mike became an Angel investor in our company.) Mike has always been quick to separate the web wheat from the chaff and he was able to see through the puns that what are were doing is real and meaningful both as a community site and a business.

Nothing like thrilling your mom by having you name appear in bold all-caps on the front page of the Journal. Nothing. Unless you’re Mike’s mom =)