If it's the latter and anyone can play it could be interesting to have a long list of affilate blogs at the left, and show their current headlines in mouse-over drop-downs. That would allow quicker access to other sites, more of an overview of what's happening out there, and also more of a networky sense of wider involvement.
If you try to show titles and headlines without drop-downs, if the available space only allows two or three headline lists and the network grows, you're going to get an increasingly small slice of what's happening out there.
Although I suppose it could be a combination of both, with your favourite two or three sites shows in full and drop downs for the rest.
The current one does only "stories" and misses any promoted diaries to the Front Page. There would have to be a proper "frontpage" feed, as well as a (10 most) "recent diaries" feed and a (10 most) "recommended diaries" feeds. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
Embedding headlines for lots of pages would make the page very big very quickly unless you're doing something AJAX like.
