While we weren't looking

Somehow I don't see blogs as every becoming significantly more popular than they are today. A blog can be a better tool for handling a lot of services provided by corporate websites or journalists, and some consumers will find the time to use them, but the fact is, most people have neither the time, nor the inclination, to post their daily thoughts on the internet.

Another barrier to overcome is anti-self-indulgence. I started a blog, but gave it up after a couple months, not because I didn't have time or anything interesting to say, but because I couldn't figure out what made me think that anyone cared what I had to say...

In all honesty, I don't think blogs will grow in popularity much more than they already are. Look at us, blog users. We're all "technical types." To put it another way, we're geeks, nerds, dorks, etc. Before we had our blogs we ran dial-in modem bulletin board systems (BBS's) years back. Blogs to us are new and interesting because of the advantages they provide over the various forms of internet communication we've traditionally dealt with, but most people don't understand that. In trying to explain blogs and why you should be excited to them to the non-techy types, the response I almost always inevitably receive is, "And how exactly is it different from a normal online journal?" And how exactly do you answer that? Don't get me wrong, I love blogs just as much as the next nerd, but they are overhyped and that's now lie. It's just a fancy word for something that has existed for a long time, a la the "meme." The blog "revolution" has reached it's climax.

Maybe not more popular, no, but perhaps more credible. I think Anil's saying that people who make an effort to blog intelligently, and keep it up for years, get listened to.

Blogs aren't only for "technical types." Let's not forget that there's a place for 'newbies' to get in on the blogging action -- such as sites like livejournal (ick.) but many of these people move on to have real blogs, when they get inspired by people such as Mr. Dash. :)

HAHAHAHHAHAHAA

You guys are just a LITTLE bit too obsessed in your own little world. Blog this, FOAF that! Social networks! Emergent democratic empowerment of post-protean societies, YEAH!

mickey? hello? you might remember a little thing called TypePad?

i agree that the traditional media gatekeepers are trying to maintain relevancy by coopting A-List bloggers, but whether true consciousness of this particular web publishing mechanism filters down to people like my parents (who don't have a son like me) remains to be seen.

Social networks! Blog this, FOAF that! Mobile urban international youth culture! User-centered flux capacitors! Emergent democratic empowerment of post-protean societies, YEAH!

Well, it's official! I created a site for blog sceptics called, surprisingly enough, The Blog Sceptic (blogsceptic.blogspot.com).

Anyone is welcome to email me ideas or particularly egregious examples of navel-gazing

There's no doubt that bloggign started out as a techie playground, but the biggest growth I can see is in the literary world where every frustrated writer gets instant publication and gratification. If they're anyway good they might even find that signing up for Adsense will buy then a whisky at the end of the month. The polical and social commentator also has a public. Like everything else, time will filter out the dross, and those with a loyal public will survive. There's always space for someone who captures the zeitgeist

As the producer/creator of the Suskind site I chose to use Moveable type more as a content managment tool than as a blog. The site is running on several configured blogs just as for example the Susan Orlean site does. Some areas were going to be date sensitive others weren't. It was easy to adapt the templates to hold the different elements of the site.

There are really to my mind two separate things going on. There is blogging and there is the use of blogging engines as new kind of publishing tool. It's true that they are related but they are separate things. MoveableType makes possible very fast database backed web development, allowing for archiving, categorization all with a easy to use administrative interface that requires limited coding ability to build off of. This is a huge development, sites that two years ago would have required hours of programming, can now be put with a much lower barrier to entry. It opens up all sorts of new publishing possibilities like Gawker which can be run with a tiny staff, and Morning News with a collaborative one. And services like TypePad make blogging/publishing easily accesible in the same way Tripod opened up homepages. I guess it is true that without blogs we wouldn't have blogging tools but I think it somehow limits the ideas and possibilities thy represent if they keep being labeled as such.

Joshua, thanks for posting, I think the issue you raise is interesting. There is the school of thought that calling sites made with a weblog tool "blogs" limits them, and there's the school of thought (which I obviously belong to) that says that providing non-traditional examples of "blogs" broadens the definition of the medium.

One trend that I'm strongly trying to resist is the tendency to disparage weblogs as trivial or inconsequential, so I try to lobby the more serious efforts, even those where Movable Type is being used as a more general content management system, with the blog label so people reconsider their preconceptions about what blogs can be.

I'm wondering if perhaps some people prefer a more narrow definition for simplicity's sake...?

On the Today Show a couple weeks ago, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were talking about blogs. I was still half-asleep, but I'm pretty sure it would have been surreal in any case.

An even more populist TV mention of blogs occurred last night on Jeopardy.

I believe the answer was: "XX was the first Presidential Candidate to have one of these." [funny, I can't remember who XX was but that begins to slide into political commentary -grin]

One contestant answered: "A Web site."

Alex Trebek: "Sorry, the answer is weblogs or "blogs."

Hmm... as I recall, one of the first "blogs" I ever really noticed on TV was that of Doogie Howser, MD, who would end each episode with his journal entry on his computer. I'd consider that a blog, wouldn't you?

I think the great thing about blogs is that they are easy for non-techies. Blogs really create as close to a free market in ideas, information and publishing as we'll ever see. The barriers to entry are negligible and success can mean many things and is really determined by the supplier. If a supplier is happy to blog with a tiny or zilch audience so what? Over time people will have their favourite blogs that they read frequently and easy through newsreaders an essential accompliment and that will provide an alternative and supplement to other media and a considerably richer media environment