This is basically a "me too" post. Dave Winer has a blog post entitled Blogging is part of life where he writes
I agree with the author of the Slate piece that’s getting so much play in the blogosphere, up to a point. The things that called themselves blogs that came from Denton and Calacanis are professional publications written by paid journalists that use blogging software for content management. That’s fine and I suppose you can call them blogs, but don’t get confused and think that their supposed death (which itself is arguable) has anything to do with the amateur medium that is blogging. They’re separate things, on separate paths with different futures. To say blogging is dead is as ridiculous as saying email or IM or the telephone are dead. The blog never belonged on the cover of magazines, any more than email was a cover story (it never was) but that doesn’t mean the tool isn’t useful inside organizations as a way to communicate, and as a way for businesses to learn how the public views them and their competitors.
I agree with the author of the Slate piece that’s getting so much play in the blogosphere, up to a point. The things that called themselves blogs that came from Denton and Calacanis are professional publications written by paid journalists that use blogging software for content management. That’s fine and I suppose you can call them blogs, but don’t get confused and think that their supposed death (which itself is arguable) has anything to do with the amateur medium that is blogging. They’re separate things, on separate paths with different futures.
To say blogging is dead is as ridiculous as saying email or IM or the telephone are dead. The blog never belonged on the cover of magazines, any more than email was a cover story (it never was) but that doesn’t mean the tool isn’t useful inside organizations as a way to communicate, and as a way for businesses to learn how the public views them and their competitors.
Whenever Dave Winer writes about blogging I tend to agree with him completely. This time is no exception. Blogs are social software, they facilitate communication and self expression between individuals. Just like with email and IM, there are millions of people interacting using blogs today. There are more people reading and writing blogs on places like MySpace and MSN Spaces than the populations of a majority of the countries on this planet. Blogs are here to stay.
Debating on whether companies that build companies around blogs will survive is orthogonal to discussing the survival of blogging as a medium. It's not like debating whether companies that send out email newsletters or make mailing list software will survive is equivalent to discussing the survival of email as a communication medium. Duh.