Joho the Blog
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October 20, 2003
While there are a hell of a lot of blogs and blog readers, blogs aren't even close to being a mainstream phenomenon the way email is. It'll happen. And here are some guesses (note: guesses) about what they'll look like when they do: 1. The word "blog" will expand to cover any linkable posting (a place) where a person gets to speak her mind more than once. If it's more permanent than IM, it'll be a blog. 2. Group blogs will be at least as common as individual blogs. Most people don't have time to stoke the blogfires every day, but groups do. 3. The lines between blogs and discussions will blur. Contributing to a blog discussion requires less effort than creating your own and taking the initiative to come up with topics every day or so. The regular participants in a blog discussion will consider themselves to be blogging. (We see this beginning to happen in the comment boards of the Howard Dean blog.) 4. The lines between email and blogs will blur. Already we can post to our blog via email. But at some point, maybe we'll be able to press a button on an email to post it to the Web, with the link sent automatically to everyone on the message's cc list, creating an instant blog site that grows as the thread grows. There's no technical barrier to this, of course, and the functionality already exists already almost and kind of, but it hasn't been presented to us as a type of blogging. Something like it will be, and the ecological niche between email and blogging will be quickly filled in. 5. Corollary: Closed circulation blogs will become as important as open blogs. Closed circulation lets blogs serve the function of cc lists. 6. Corollary: Many blogs will be event-based and time-limited. I.e., we'll have Leah's Graduation Blog that lasts for a month and the Class Trip to Shenandoah Blog that lasts for two weeks. 7. Blogrolls and buddy lists will thoroughly merge somehow. 8. The distinction between the big, high-traffic blogs and the rest of the world of blogging will be increasingly sharply etched. The "tail" will gain more and more value as the number of high-traffic blogs necessarily grows much more slowly. At some point, the "A-List" bloggers won't even seem like bloggers because what they're doing is so different from what the rest of us are doing. By analogy, when I receive some massive-circ email newsletter, I don't think of it as being like email I receive from a friend, even though both are using email transport. (This doesn't mean the high-traffic blogs will be of less intrinsic value. It does mean they'll be of less value relative to the increasing cumulative value of the lower-traffic blogs.) 9. Blogs will be of increasing value to democracy. Posted
by D. Weinberger at October 20, 2003 10:51 AM
TrackBackListed below are links to weblogs that reference When blogs get really popular:
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Comments
Corollary to #1: "Blog" will drop out of common usage for a more palatable term. I call my blog a "website" to my friends and family, and that seems to work much better for their understanding.
Posted by: Jack Vinson | October 20, 2003 03:58 PM
The key thing that's going to be important here is that third point. People like message boards for building community because of the ease of posting and the threading abilities. The first person to really make Weblogging and threaded commenting work on non-Slashcode stuff is going to make the Weblog world very, very happy.
Posted by: Geof | October 20, 2003 05:31 PM
on 1 and 4, i think that the distinction between im and blogging and email will lessen and the statement if its more permanent than an im will only apply to those im's that the conversants (or one of the conversants) don't save. i im only because if something gets said i can save it in a format that i can copy and paste from. i can see enjoying an option to save im's to my blog.
i wonder if more people will start deleting more entries in their blogs. maybe both blogs and im's will succumb to the already prevalent email this is worth saving forever - this gets trashed distinction.
probably not. probably people will use something like categories to highlight what become the favorite things they, or other people have written.
Posted by: trevor | October 21, 2003 12:28 AM
I agree with these comments: blogs are just the beginning of something more important than even blogs! I especially agree that one of the first thing that must go is this word 'blog'. A blog is a website. For a way forward, check out www.littoralis.com which offers a kind of 'blog' but with automated email Alerts to subscribers, plus classified indexing of content. It's free. And there's no mention of 'blog' anywhere on the website that I can see.
Posted by: Andrew Thornton | October 21, 2003 06:39 AM
Blog will become even more what they actually are: Content Management Systems in disguise.
Posted by: JJ | October 21, 2003 10:42 AM
I agree with JJ,
but wait? feels like Im in a discussionforum or soething? hmm..
Posted by: JJs friend | October 21, 2003 11:33 AM
I'm not so convinced that the lines between blogging and email will start to blur.
I can see why you say they would, but I think most email still remains within the realms of "private" (despite the fact that it's often not secure) and this is how people think of it. People also think of email, for the most part, as a one-to-many communications tool.
Blogs, on the other hand, are very much in the public domain. (I'm aware that you can create private blogs, or post private entries, but I suspect very few people do this. I certainly don't. It would defeat the purpose.)
Blogs are also a many-to-many tool (even if the blog entries aren't created collaboratively, conversations can start among the commenters).
Of course, it's anyone's call at this stage...
Posted by: MH -- Internet Consultant | October 21, 2003 12:51 PM
MH, I've never been right before and I see no reason to start now.
Posted by: dweinberger | October 21, 2003 03:08 PM
Re #2 - Today if you want a lot of attention on a blog, you need to keep supplying content. In the future, if aggregator use spreads, this will no longer be necessary.
A blog which produces one high quality essay a week can then compete with an Instapundit, because in both cases, your aggregator lets you know when there is something you may want to read.
Of course, this means that aggregators need to get more universal, and maybe go to some sort of push technology. It would also be really nice if the cheap and easy to use blogs add aggregator feeds.
On the subject of discussions, if every blog, or at least every interesting one implemented the MT-style trackback or something like it, blog entries could be threaded like messages (especially if it were super easy to do). Then an aggregator could aggregate through the trackbacks and give you a sort of threaded discussion.
In any case, blogger should DEMAND trackbacks (pings) and RSS/XML feeds from their blog provider (are you listening, blogspot?).
Where blogs are going is hard to predict. But they certainly are a significant phenomenon that is adding to the ability of people to get and provide information and entertainment in novel ways!
Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools) | October 21, 2003 10:45 PM
I think all of the above will happen plus video blogging. I am just waiting for a way to hyperlink individual frames. bandwith is the only real issue. Just think, everybody will have their own "tv" news, sit-com, diary, or what have you, "blog".
Posted by: mike lawson | October 21, 2003 11:07 PM
Supposedly, the next version of MT will include threaded comments, though Ben and Mena seem to be preoccupied with TypePad at the moment so there's no telling when the next version will be released.
Posted by: Robert Prather | October 22, 2003 01:29 AM
About corollary #6 -
When my wife and I got married over the summer, we went backpacking through Europe and kept a blog for our families and friends back home. And, as it turned out, some friends of ours were in Europe that we didn't know about. They saw our blog and found out we'd both be in Spain at the same time, so we ended up meeting in Seville.
I don't have time for a regular blog, but this was a great way to keep in touch with everyone.
Posted by: Matt | October 22, 2003 02:05 AM
Let this be a contribution to this forum-like discussion.
'Private' blogs are quite difficult to trace. Thus one should have access to servers data to discuss safely about that, and even this way hand-made blogs can't be accounted.
I manage 3 blogs, one public franch speaking as most of the people I address use french, two private, english and greek speaking for friends around the world and familly respectively. Then I participate at what was a mailing list and became a collective blog, a private one called 3D.
The three private blogs are 'hand-made', without specific software, the access is pasword protected, the folders are bot protected and 3D is hold in a private server.
Despite the fact that i sign every entry as OldCola there is no trace of the private activity anywhere to be accessible to Mister Everybody. And private bloging represent 65 % of the published volume.
A 5th blog is discussed, to go private, as a collaborative pre-edition site, where contibutors can discuss matters prior to public display of the stuff. As I dispose of templates for hand-made blogs I suspect that I will be handling it in a well hidden place.
How is it possible to say what is the volume of private blogs ?
I really like the analysis of David; I am talking about analysis and not predictions, as most of the points presented seems to be verified already ;-)
Posted by: OldCola | October 22, 2003 02:24 AM
Blogs (don't like that word either) still have a wierd feeling about them. Maybe if there were constellations of them. Each blog in a constellation would look the same in some way and you'd know what your environment was. Blogs could then be sorted out like solar systems, moons and planets feeding stars, stars feeding the galaxy, galaxies feeding the Absolute All and Everything Sun something or other...
Bad karma to Uncle Krugman. Angry Uncle Krugman. (And Mo 'Baby Doll' Dowd...)
Posted by: ct | October 22, 2003 02:37 AM
The difference between a website and a weblog is really the difference between corporate and personal... except that there are companies doing blogs. The difference might just be the mechanics of being able to simply add to a website without doing any coding or even opening an editor. The difference might be the community aspect of sharing information. These are not all the differences and some of these will probably start to blur, but what is certain is that blogging will evolve. I wonder what the demographics of bloggers are and what life transitions they will be going through in the next 5 years... Might get a whole lot more "look at my cute baby" blogs.
Posted by: Jonathan Wilson | October 22, 2003 02:56 AM
I'll go along with the folks who don't like the blogging name. I don't think it really matters though. Most anyone who's not involved with blogs doesn't care whether or not you call it a blog or a website.
As for me, blogging allowed me a quick way to get stuff I was emailing people out to a bigger crowd, and accidentally caused me to think of other ways to use it that matches items on the original list, most specifically #5 and 6. I'm a teacher, and I'm considering starting a closed blog just for the students and parents of my class, or a blog just for a specific topic, like a shared book. Of course, I have to do this without them knowing about my other blog, which is decidedly non-teacher-like.
Posted by: Dave E. | October 22, 2003 05:10 AM
I agree with the group blog idea. I think they will become more popular, and allow for editorial, design, and technical support of sorts so that the average blogger doesn't have to deal with mundane things. The line between group blogs and most news websites will blur substantially.
I can also see a portal type system appearing in the future where an end user customizes a front page so that their favorite bloggers appear. Sort of the way Excite allows you to choose if you want weather, stocks or a television lineup. This would have to have some kind of group tipjar arrangement, but I don't see why it wouldn't be manageble. Again, the distinction between professional and semi-professional gets blurred.
Posted by: ruprecht | October 22, 2003 10:20 AM
9. Blogs will be of increasing value to democracy.
A throwaway remark, IMHO.
Of course blogs will be important to democracy, but so will doughnuts. You dont see me blogging about doughnuts do you??
:P Good analysis otherwise. I can't wait for #7.
Posted by: Vigilance Matters | October 22, 2003 10:22 AM
I do think you just blogged about donuts!
I do think better feedback from more people = better democracy...ps peanut butter donuts are good
Posted by: Reform Blog | October 23, 2003 03:20 AM
social
Posted by: golnar | October 25, 2003 10:30 PM
apart from point #1 (the evolution of the language which we will use to describe these things is the least predictable and least important), i couldn't agree more; i see these developments as inevitable.
disclaimer: i am currently running a blogging platform that i think points the way to these mergings: integrated IM (with subscriptions and alerts implemented), private email, group blogs and multiple blogs. people love it and the viral effects are phenomenal. currently free and advertising free. it doesn't take too much imagination to see how the bits start to fit together, imho. I carefully considered the relevancy of this post as being quite directly on topic...hope you agree.
for those interested in seeing this in action, click through the link on my name or got to: to http://www.motime.com
Posted by: howard liptzin | November 2, 2003 06:50 AM
the blog fomat is appropriate for the telling of tales of the lives of Mexican village women from traditional handcrafts producing Tecalpulco - it is the casual and intimate quality of the medium that i think makes it a powerful marketing adjunct
Posted by: Artcamp | November 2, 2003 11:07 PM
Very interesting... What do you think of teh impact of blogging on journalism and what is your opinion regarding the future of blogging then??
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Posted by: Tilicho handicrafts | March 22, 2004 11:14 AM
I post comments because I want to be part of the conversation. I've made a conscious decision to engage with weblog authors and other commenters. I want to share my opinions and thoughts. I want to be a positive player in the new weblog medium. I want to overcome the boundries of space, even if only for a few short moments, and engage with others.
Posted by: Make Money with eBay Business | May 18, 2004 06:35 PM
I think there is a huge difference between blogging and CMS. IMHO
Posted by: Paul | August 6, 2004 01:14 PM
You made some very good points. But I think its a big mistake to overlook the impact that Celebrity Bloggers will make on the blogging scene. So far, there are only a few celebrities that are blogging, but when they start to realize just how much their fans like it, I think it will become epidemic.
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