Future of Blogging – Blogging is Changing For The Better – It’s About Collaboration

Update: This post from Scott Rosenberg is worth reading on the topic. Well written and spot on.

Paul Boutin wrote a post today saying that blogging is so 2004 using Jason Calacannis and Robert Scoble as proof points that it’s dead. Matthew Ingram slams Paul in his post here.

Lets face it blogging is two things today 1) online magazine format and/or 2) collaborative blogging effort or platform. Paul’s argument talks about solo bloggers trying to compete with online magazines and the difficulty in competing with their volumes of posts. But Paul Boutin misses the point that the collaborative side of blogging is just as relevant as trying to get on the page view treadmill. The trend is toward collaborative blogging not walled garden ‘protect pageviews at all cost’ type blogging.

Fact is Jason and Robert are broadcasting. They are not really collaborating with anyone. Jason promotes his brand and his new company. Robert the same except Robert is more conversational often amplifying what other people say. They both don’t have enough original ideas and content to compete in the market today on the pageview model. That is why they go private and/or use other tools.

Blogging is a team sport and the online magazines like Techcrunch and other don’t team up. In fact they create walled gardens to defend their page view status – unlike collaborative bloggers who earn respect and money from their content – in the form of consulting or thought pieces. Look for the distinction between bloggers who are generalists and specialists. That will level set the blogging market soon.

Matthew, myself, and many more have opinions worth sharing and collaborating on. That collaborative nature of these blogs can work together to curate content as a group. I predict that corporate blogging will go the collaborative way. I’ve been talking to Intel and Cisco recently that their blogging armies are organized wrong. Both company’s bloggers are just mailing in the blog posts not really aligning with any groups to collaborate. Mainly because PR handles the blogs and are used to monologues not dialogs. Instead the opportunity for corporate blogging is to work with other bloggers. This new approach and opportunity generates great content for users.

Blogs have evolved and will continue to evolve into monolithic entities or group produced content engines. The future of social media will be more group based. The future of online advertising will be more monolithic based.

Blogging isn’t dead it’s mainstream.