A journalist sees the web as a set of nodes that are broadcast to, like a newspaper. But it is not like that at all. Newspapers are vessels of a more limited range of opinions because they are finite documents. In fact a newspaper largely sources its articles along with other newspapers by subscribing to a news wire, which explains why you only really need to read your local paper. It also adds local interesting or relevant writing by writers attached to a particular publication that are mostly shared media accepted over "the wire". Weblogs have developed similarly with a series of tricks which have been called "social networking".
Some small groups exist, exchange information and survive but that is not how the internet connects people. It does not need to be an interaction of reactions that are simultaneous but a slow series of chained events that can rapidly grow (viral growth is actually more like the delta mouth of a river, generally it is a flow across already carved pathways).
To become comparable to the mainstream of information flow has been tried but for the same reason that walking would become less popular if we suddenly discovered we could fly around, getting a mass convergence for an event on the web is much harder than letting it trickle in as it happens.
The beauty of Web 2.0 is a little like post modernism. The reliance on the information pathways, the river deltas now has a new force that allows human connection to drive the information around and facilitate methods that other nodes connected to your node are motivated to and benefit by indicating how interesting your piece of information is. It is using the emotive force of mutual admiration to drive information into the right minds.
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