It's Time to Rethink the BLOG

By Christopher Prouty
MyDesignGuy

I'm probably not going to win many friends with my thinking about the "how's and why's" of the Internet's latest trend, the weblog (often called blog), but I'm willing to go out on a limb here. Read on and see if you'll join me.

Blogs are an interesting concept; they allow your average website owner to instantly post their thoughts, ideas, diaries, travel plans and grocery shopping lists on the Internet for the world to read. Furthermore, those who view blog postings have the ability to connect with the original poster by leaving instant feedback. Seems like a great idea, right? Well, I have my doubts. Here's why.

Blogs face some serious challenges, not the least of which is that, quite simply, no one has the energy to care about blog postings. Still with me? Good.

The sheer volume of blogs out there have deteriorated the blog's effectiveness because blog readers just don't have the time to jump from blog to blog, reading the latest content. Certainly this wasn't always the case; when blogs first emerged, the blogsphere was smaller and blog surfers could more easily blog-hop. Now that the blog is ubiquitous, we're drinking water from a fire hose.

So what is the future of the blog?

My prediction is that once the trendy appeal of the blog fades, we'll see a gradual shift back to the durable power of the online forum to share ideas and information. Forums give us the same result, instant posting and replying to content, in an easier to navigate, find, and manage form. But have we wasted our efforts on the technologies that make up the blog? Absolutely not! I suggest netizens rethink and retool those technologies to make websites more dynamic.

For example, imagine giving a website owner the ability to move, add, change and delete actual web content without needing to know any type of coding whatsoever. Reshape blog posting technologies and integrate them tightly within the content of a webpage; give the page owner a mechanism (form) to transform that content instantly and we'll better leverage the how-to behind the blog. But these sites won't be a blogs anymore as much as they will be more active pages with more relevant and meaningful content. Now there's a limb that I'd be happy to be out on.

Spring 2007 -Volume 17, Number 2

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