I can't help thinking that the winner of this nouveau publishing spectrum isn't going to be a hosting service, but a linking service.
It's possible you're right, but I would personally guess in the other direction. I think Tumblr is the most successful example of an approach that focuses on the internal ecosystem more (posts can certainly contain links, but linking outward isn't the focus). Tumblr tends to cover smaller things (1/2-paragraph posts, photos), but that model of an internally focused platform seems like it has room to expand. Whereas the link-based model already competes with a million existing ways to organize links, with varying mixes of voting, curation, and algorithms: Reddit, HN, Twitter, Slashdot, Prismatic, BoingBoing, etc.
It's possible you're right, but I would personally guess in the other direction. I think Tumblr is the most successful example of an approach that focuses on the internal ecosystem more (posts can certainly contain links, but linking outward isn't the focus). Tumblr tends to cover smaller things (1/2-paragraph posts, photos), but that model of an internally focused platform seems like it has room to expand. Whereas the link-based model already competes with a million existing ways to organize links, with varying mixes of voting, curation, and algorithms: Reddit, HN, Twitter, Slashdot, Prismatic, BoingBoing, etc.