Blogging Boot Camp

In researching what is the future of blogs and blogging I came across several common themes.

• Group blogging and blog networks - blogs aggregated together to form communities.
• Inclusion of other tools such as podcasts, forums, classifieds, chatting, video, etc. to blur the definition of blogging and enhance the content.
• Lines blurring between blogs and wikis. In the business world, Google allows all employees to have a blog as well as contribute to work wikis. In time these two forms will not only proliferate, but also merge.
• Access controls -Blogs with channels so content is available to some, but not the whole world wide web community
• Blogs become more like an email address or IM ID. Everyone has a blog.

I found an interesting article talking about how computers will generate blogs to compete with human bloggers. The article can be found here:

http://www.blogherald.com/2007/03/19/

the-future-of-blogging-computer-generated-or-human-generated-blogs/

The article talks about computers scanning the web for existing blog content which is then combined with other content to form blogs. This type of blogging is already in existence. The issue at hand here is how the content is labelled. Should it have a disclaimer stating the content is not original?

And looking more closely how blogging will impact the business world in the future I was able to find some common themes and thoughts on the matter.

• Corporate websites as blogs - There are a few companies already using this approach(such as: Gartner forecasts that blogging will peak in 2007, leveling off when the number of writers who maintain a personal website reaches 100 million. Gartner analysts expect that the novelty value of the medium will wear off as most people who are interested in the phenomenon have checked it out, and new bloggers will offset the number of writers who abandon their creation out of boredom. The firm estimates that there are more than 200 million former bloggers who have ceased posting to their online diaries, creating an exponential rise in the amount of “dotsam” and “netsam” — that is to say, unwanted objects on the Web.

  Wikipedia also reports that 5% of Fortune 500 companies have company blogs.

  So what to make of the future of the blog.

  It is an evolving medium with strong usage and acceptance in the non-work environment. As blogs begin to proliferate in the work environment we will see the nature of corporate public relations and marketing evolve as well as how work is completed through greater creativity and collaboration.

  And with that I would encourage people to prognosticate the future of blogging here…