Authority refers specifically to Technorati, the blog search engine, but more generally to the primacy of the blog as the hub for a conversation. Statusphere describes the myriad social networks and microblogging sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Really, this is nothing new. Distributed conversations and "network weaving" are as old as conversation itself.
The first problem is those of us who want to track conversations about brands or blog posts are presented with an unholy mess. The second is the people having these conversations don’t care if we find them.
The solution lies in a more advanced search for links (or links that arent’t there)- a "trackback 2.0?" Brian points to solutions in his post- Backtype notable among them. But I think we have a ways to go before wrangling distributed conversations is easy.
(Do you think Brian will find this comment since I linked to the Mashable piece rather than his www.briansolis.com version?)
Mobile post sent by DougH using Utterli. 
Replies. mp3