I disagree. Those who talk loudly and frequently about themselves are the ones who we see and hear from most on social sites.
Quick example: Dave Winer. Everything he posts anything, even something inane like "I bricked my iPod", it's on the front page of every social site? Why? Because he submits it everywhere and constantly talks about himself.
But on the other hand, we have people like patio11, who are not annoying, just talkative.
In the big scheme of things, a bingo card generator is not really exciting. But his writing is interesting nonetheless, and it ends up being widely distributed. If he didn't talk about himself, nobody would know Bingo Card Creator.
Combine it with c) and make it something like 'Contribute and be visible'. No distinction (at that level) between it being sharing and useful (Patrick) or just overdone noise (many others), but they're both taking a similar tack.
The bloggers who blog about making money from blogging would be in that category.
But the stuff patio11 posts related to BCC is interesting. I think writing interesting posts and submitting them to HN counts as participating and providing value.
You can't just join social sites, start posting incessantly, and expect anything good to happen.
I mean, we built up @TweetSmarter on Twitter to get more retweets than @NYTimes and it took a LOT of time—years of providing Twitter tech support and building up a reputation. Now, however, it's true that anything we talk about gets noticed. But it's the tip of the iceberg.
Quick example: Dave Winer. Everything he posts anything, even something inane like "I bricked my iPod", it's on the front page of every social site? Why? Because he submits it everywhere and constantly talks about himself.