It's why I was always impressed by Mashable. I followed it when it was just Pete Cashmore, because a few Digg posts by him seemed quite interesting. I was awed at how he managed to worm his way into the mainstream tech community by garnering Digg followers, until now his site is one of the biggest out there.

It takes a lot of dedication to do that sort of thing nowadays. It's impressive when somebody succeeds.

But it's just as true for all the "mainstream" topics he points to as easy traffic magnets. There are a zillion people trying to make money writing about celebrity gossip, too.