Where do you guys see blogging in the future? How will things evolve? Will it all turn into one big mess or will the internet become more like a well-organized chat room? What are your thoughts?
IMO blogs will be filtered from searchengines completely or atleast will be thrown into there own category on search engines. Similar to how Audio/Images/News have there own categories.
I think we will struggle to keep the good info online and to drop the old, and discontinued blogs. Sites like myspace are full of "community" but the value is very immediate, you wouldn't want to keep it in the long term. The big hosts like blogger will have to decide how long to keep abandoned sites. It's easier when you host your own site. You get bored, you stop paying, the content drops out. Historically that may not be good - no "first edition blogs" to collect with their leather covers and potential financial appreciation. But history is rewriting itself so perhaps we can afford that. It does make me wonder though, if my home was buried in a volcanic aruption tomorrow (a la Vesuvius), and not entirely impossible given the 30 volcanos in my city, what the archeologists would make of the remains. Would they realise that the melted gray box in the cupboard (server room to you an me) was infact my greatest treasure? That although I sat with one gray box it was the hidden gray box that had the greater value? I guess they will because they will have evolved from us, but you'd have thought the same about how we view the Egyptians, Romans etc. Aaaargh, what have you done to me? Right when I'm trying to source some 145mm cranks for a Haro BMX!
I think that personalized searches will have to do with whether you get a lot of blog results or not. There will also be a lot of pre-determination based on studies who is most likely to want blog results, what kinds of results etc. For example: personalized results will be based on the popularity sites and blogs have in the eyes of your peers. One of the best sessions at the SES was the one where the CEO of technorati was present sharing some of the plans they have etc.
I agree completely. Blogs would become a more unique and seperate community from the rest of the internet. Maybe instead of .com, they will have .blog, or .bg or something.
Yeah, I think so, too. In fact, I'm suprised why it hasn't been done already. Maybe Blog, despite of its huge community, still is a fresh idea to other internet surfers. I will just tell a story as an example of how far away blogs still are to some more common folks. Back in the day when I was still exprimenting with my site, I briefly blogged my daily event. I mentioned this friend of mine on my blog because we went for dinner. Since it happened, I put it on my blog, because there wasn't anything else going on that day. I said I went to dinner with her. She some how took it as a serious offense. she say under no circumstances should I publish other people's "private life" on the internet. I didn't mention who she was. No description whatsoever, just one simple sentence "me and her went for dinner." Then I spent the rest of the paragraph talking about how I was going to get a bigger fridge. She told me I was totally disrespectful and sweared to her God she would never talk to me again, nor am I allowed to go to her place, ever. Right away I knew what was in her mind. So, for all this time, our friendship is supposed to be something "no one should know about." I can't even say I went to dinner with you, is that right! I talked to my friends about this and they asked what's the big deal. Seriously. What happened was that she heard someone saying "Yian wrote about you on his website." And she just kicked the living hell out of my butt without even reading what I actually wrote. She was mentioned in just one short sentence, and she thought the entire world now looked at her with weird eyes! What a joker.
I am waiting for a sensible integration of all the things that people are looking for, relevant news from respected sites, blogs, info sites etc. A lot of the search results in the future will be based on personal search as in what sorts of results the user prefers. I think there is definitely a future in blogging, but those who are not interested in blogs will have the option to avoid them.