It can even have a detrimental effect, as people who tweet or blog about something can psychologically feel they've done enough good work, instead of being compelled to take "real" action.
I also wonder what impact things like voting and retweeting have on that psychological effect. I can only imagine that this kind of outside validation only reinforces the idea that what you've done is good and good enough. Further, what impact does it have to display the vote count to others (both for the commenter and its readers)?
