RodeWorks

I’ve seen a couple of posts in recent weeks on the current and future state of blogging. Part of the discussion surrounds the ease of commenting on others posts on external sites, which takes the conversation out of the creator’s site. In particular new sites like Shyftr allow individuals to share content they read from multiple blogs in one place, and comment on them there. In this case all conversation goes someplace else. The other theme in the future of blogging is that services like Twitter, MySpace and RSS aggregators are the real future.

I think blogging is here to stay for a while. What I do see disappearing is the ability of high profile bloggers to earn revenue with click-through ad revenue. But the ease with which people can use blogging tools to create and distribute content is just too good. Sure, that content may well be read through an RSS reader, or some other method external to the blog itself. But for me that’s what makes blogging software so powerful. I actually prefer people not read this content on the actual blog site — if they’re getting it through an RSS reader they’ll probably read it more often!

The Ed Techie: Whither the blogosphere?

There is a hint in some of the comments above that this marginalisation of the blog is inevitable for all of us. I don’t think this is so, we help determine that ecosystem, and for many of us the blog still fulfills a very central function, because of the type of communication we engage in.

Wired Campus: Blogs May Be Rendered Obsolete by New Technology - Chronicle.com