"Everybody" is still very few

The most geekish about the high tech industry is the preference for calling the race over long before it is. And even more often, start a new race before the prior one haven't even started yet.

When 3G telephony was on everybody's lips, but far from being in anybody's hands, the press shouted "it's now the time for 4G". Perhaps it is, but what is the likeliness that a technology that's described as being the fourth generation is to become a standard when carriers are struggling to convince their customers to use handsets based on the 2.5 generation (GPRS). Where is the respect for all innovators that will come up with fantastic ideas about how to deal with the technology that's available. Or, where is the common sence?

Now blogging seems to be out of date already, according to the press. Just when it all started. Computer Sweden put it on their "down"-list today, stating "more and more people are doing it and it raises the question of how many that actually cares anymore"

Well, some guys have been doing this for years, since the early days of WWW. But many of us have been blogging one or two years. And the vast blogging population have started only months ago. According to Technorati there were 8.7 million bloggers worldwide in April 2005, an increase of 400 per cent compared to March 2004. That's quite an increase. But it's still not that many. In fact it's less than 1 per cent of all Internet users world wide.

Blogging, mob-logging and behaviors alike all have great possibilities to grow to a much higher penetration rate than the web sites of today. In fact I believe blogs and blogging software is the future web site for most of us. Because of its user friendliness and simplicity. And it doesn't only compete with mainstream media. It's competion is to found among web consultants, photo print shops, project management tools, hospitality facilities and so on.

Perhaps the "cool" in blogging is running out. But the behavior has only started and if you want to make business on blogs, go ahead. Write books, add better features making it even easier, create better income opportunities for bloggers, create aggregators, arrange blog training, writing courses,  prize competitions, what ever.

But please, don't say "the race is over, let's find another". If you're not a researcher or geek, that is.

Comments

[Ludovic Copéré]

I would say that the blog race is at a critical turnpoint: blogs have quickly evolved in the adoption lifecycle to be today a mass-market concept. At stake now are the new models built around integrating blogs with existing businesses, whether for consumer PR (viral marketing), ISPs/telcos (driving data traffic & helping reducing churn), content providers (increasing ad consumption & traffic)...

The broadband race has brought us pipes big enough. The blog race is bringing us the framework to fill those pipes. Is the race to come to provide the content to fill those pipes?

[Ulf Börgesson]

I agreee. It is ridiculous to say that blogs are out based on that more and more people are doing them. It´s like someone in the 1850´s saying that newspapers are out because there are more of them. But what is going to fade, is the intereset of the blog in itself. The discussion will move to the content of the blog. Like we discuss whether movies, books, plays, magazines, webbsites etc are interesting, amusing, scary, informative or whatever. The interesting blog will live, and the blogs written only for the purpose of having a blog will pass like ships in the night.