Blogging: Where is all of this Going to Take Us Next?

It is getting really competitive and really active in the industry that serves bloggers, and it appears that the blogging phenomenon is seen as having legs. Blogs have moved out from the fringes of news reporting into special interest blogs like this one. And while some aspects of blogging may be seen by some as a fad, corporations are now experimenting with how to use blogging effectively for internal and external communications. Blogging as soft marketing is now well entrenched.
Blogging software was front and center at the DEMO@15 conference. Red Herring, Yahoo Financial News, and the New Mexican all offer good overviews of this conference and the prominence of blogging products at this year’s techie conference.
But as venture capital money and entrepreneurs flow into what was a cottage industry, what will follow?
I tend to agree with David Geller, an Internet company executive, who sees convergence between blogs and web sites in an interview published this morning at seattlepi.com. “Blogging is nothing but really easy-to-use Web publishing.”
Creative minds and lots of money will lead to an explosion of ideas and innovations, and many of them will be looking for ways to bring together web pages, blogs, search engines, e-mail, and who knows what else. We will also see more video and audio being integrated into the mix as the entertainment industry goes kicking and screaming into this brave new world.
For example, imagine the convergence of radio, the Internet and blogging into a new generation of opinion sharing technology that brings talk radio into the new century. Bring this together with the amazing breakthroughs happening in devices that can serve these new markets and who knows what we will happen in the next few years…