Blogging's Future: Up, Up and Away?
by:
Dr V P Kochikar
Beyond a doubt, blogging has a bright future. It's tempting to get carried away by all the exuberance being generated.
Bill Gates says blogging "will au fond change how we document our lives". Technorati's CEO David Sifry says that there are 11 diary posts being ready-made every second!
While this may well be true, we must resist the temptation to get carried away. Let's analyze blogging's prospects as a 'personal technology', or a technology that individuals use to improve their effectiveness or productivity, or just to have fun.
All eminent personal technologies that gain widespread use (be it the humble pen, the telephone or the iPod), bear certain hallmarks: they are easy to use, fulfil a basic need, and provide a new way to express an existing behavior or habit. Technologies that do the cut on these three respects tend to 'take-off', with their use billowing steeply*.
Blogging for certain fulfils a basic need, the need for self-expression and societal interaction. It is as well much powerful in many a respects than different technologies that meet similar necessarily - the telephone, email or online chatting - in that it is much 'permanent', and allows visibility to anyone who can access the Web. It as well provides a new way to exercise our natural propensity to form groups with like-minded folks, by allowing us to form 'virtual communities' on the Web. It as well allows folk to 'discover' others with similar tastes, where
they may be in the world.
Well, that leaves ease of use. I am afraid blogging is somewhat less stellar in this respect - patch it is simpler than creating personal Web pages, it still lags far behind the telephone and email in ease of use. So, ease of use is the 1st thing that necessarily to improve just about blogs (I hope the diary tool-makers are listening).
If one is tempted to argue that blogging is already really successful, one only necessarily to pause to consider the numbers: by most estimates there are about 80 million blogs in the earth as of today, patch the number of telephones world-wide (fixed-line and mobile) is about 2 billion. This is not to take thing
away from the success of blogging, but only to establish (an avowedly somewhat crude) benchmark!
However, we've looked at only half the image so far - becoming successful. Success brings its own problems, and sure enough, blogging too wish need to overcome a couple of challenges that success brings with it:
Better route to manage 'blog clutter'.
Even with the current number of blogs out there, it is becoming difficult for folk to navigate the blogosphere. Telephones or email don't need to solve this problem as they are 'push' technologies, which means that you *want* to restrict who can contact you mistreatment these technologies. However, if blogs are to truly live up to their promise of allowing the 'discovery' of like-minded folks, then diary search engines should (and will) get smarter.
Search is of course not the only way to manage clutter - for example, Business Week's Heather Green talks just about creating 'influential blogger' lists.
Blogging necessarily to find route to alter diverse communication necessarily
Blogging tools already do a half-decent job of allowing the sharing of digital content. However, as camera phones proliferate, sharing images and movies wish much and much become mainstream. As well blogging from heterogenous devices (phones and house appliances move to mind) is likely to need support.
Of course, this piece only addresses blogging as a 'personal technology'. Analysis of its prospects in business - which are fledgling at the moment - is the subject of a some discussion altogether!
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*This is driven by Metcalfe's Law, which holds that the quality
of thing
increases exponentially as the number of users goes up.
About The Author
Dr. V P Kochikar’s (read his diary at www.webquarters.com) current areas of interest are in Strategic Foresight, the Impact of Technology on Business and Society, Noesis Management and Technology Risk Management. He has publicised wide
and serves on the editorial consultatory boards and review panels for some international journals and conferences. He has as well lectured in a guest capacity at business schools and industry fora in India, the US and the UK. Dr Kochikar has been profiled by Noesis Management Review magazine, and interviewed by, among others, BBC, Business Now magazine, and the Economic Times. He holds a PhD from IIT Madras, a Bachelor’s in Technology from IIT Bombay and a Master’s in Technology from IISc, Bangalore. Dr. Kochikar is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the Information Resources Management Association (IRMA).
