Dave Pollard provides a discourse on The Tipping Point as it relates to blogging and the description of how networks form and how blogs tip into popularity.
What got me most excited was how Gladwell's thesis -- that diseases become epidemics if and only if they meet three criteria -- lends itself by analogy to just about every change initiative (what Gladwell calls "social epidemics") you can imagine: getting your blog recognized, achieving enduring change - la John Kotter in business, or changing the world from a consumer culture to a citizen/conserver culture.
While The Tipping Point might provide an explanation of how blogs catch fire, I find the various Network Analysis discussions more apropos once a blogging network has been established. Valdis Krebs has the most extensive set of examples of Social Network Analysis. Ross Mayfield gives us an example of a social network from Ryze.