First, the benefits and drawbacks of anonymity. Aardvark writes:

That led to a little debate about psuedonymous blogging. I pointed out that some of the best newer Middle East-focused bloggers have been pseudonymous, such as Baheyya and Badger. So was I, pre-tenure. While that's one way to get past the problems above, it's only temporary - at some point, pseudonymous bloggers will have to go public if they want to get past a certain threshold of getting the most out of their work. Asad thought that bloggers should write under their own names, and be brave enough to state their opinions openly. That's a fine sentiment, if you have tenure, and I don't feel comfortable imposing that standard on others who might pay the price.

First, I'm not sure why pseudonymous bloggers would have to go public to "get the most out of their work" since this goal is not clearly defined. As Lounsbury pointed out in comments, there are significant drawbacks to posting under one's real name, and these risks extend indefinitely into the future. Publishing online, like piercings and tattoos, is not something that can easily be undone. RSS aggregators and massive caching archives (Google and Wayback, for example) make it exceedingly hard to remove content from the internet once it has been released. Even if writing under one's true identity poses no current risk, it might in the future affect one's job prospects, personal life, etc. Certainly this problem is not limited to academic circles, which is why 'Aqoul does not require contributors to use their real names. Online personas build credibility and develop reputations over time in much the same way as real identities, so making academic credentials known does not necessarily lead to increased popularity or influence.

And of course there are additional problems for bloggers in countries where censorship and invasive surveillance are standard practice, yet another reason why aliases are useful.

In any case, Abu Aardvark described these risks at length as they pertained to junior scholars and academics.

Now, with regard to the relative influence of blogs, Aardvark recorded some interesting panel observations:

Asad [AbuKhalil] remarked that blogs are essentially a narcissistic and personal exercise, and talking about them is twice as bad - I have to agree - and then went on to make some very interesting points about what blogs can and can't achieve (he's much more pessimistic than am Josh, Juan or I about the importance or influence of blogs). Helena talked about the virtues of blogging as a form of networked communication, and pointed out some gender inequalities and status hierarchies in the blogosphere (I somewhat disagree about the latter point: while there are obvious hierarchies in the blogosphere, conventionally measured academic "status" only gets you so far in blogging compared to producing quality content on a regular basis). Juan and Josh mostly talked about their own blogs (Josh had some particularly hilarious anecdotes, and a refeshing honesty about some of the reasons why people blog), and both did a good job of showing the routes by which blogs can become influential (through journalists, through policymakers, through particular academic or policy communities, through generous links from major "hub" bloggers).

Narcissistic, definitely. There is always a certain amount of ego involved in blogging, but I agree that it's a good way to find people with similar interests (but not necessarily identical viewpoints). As for gender/status inequalities, these are probably a reflection of blogosphere demographics in general (white male, US-centric). With respect to building influence, I would say this is a subtle art that requires knowledge of one's current and potential audience segments. Personally, I think it's silly to aim for blogosphere popularity alone - i.e. bloggers and regular blog consumers - as this is rather limiting when it comes to actually shaping public opinion.

I do hope Aardvark spends more time elaborating on panel discussion around this second theme, very interesting stuff.