Are blogs on their way out in 2007?

Josh Maher posted a prediction on his blog not too long ago - Blogs will be replaced in 2007 [read "2007 Predictions: Blogs will be replaced"]. By Wikis & video. Hmm.... when a blogger - and a good one at that, imo - predicts that, it's time to pause and think!

I don't disagree with the overall tone about blogging in general in Maher's post.

It's true corporate marketing departments have hijacked blogs, or rather adopted the concept of blogging and use it extensively or exclusively to dish out their marketing spin - mostly about their company, their products, their industry, their CEOs and execs.... however, there are a lot of good blogs out there, and just like Maher - a lot of good bloggers, who will continue to contribute useful content throughout 2007, and beyond.

Yes, the blogosphere is getting crowded - and that's because blogging is made easy, effortless, and often free by services like Google's Blogger, amongst others. It's like rewinding our lives back to the early days of the web, when people discovered the power of publishing online. What followed was zillions of web sites, some very horrible design (I'm working on this blog's - and would've moved to the new design if it wasn't looking completely disastrous in IE! :) - and worse - useless content, or even an absolute lack thereof in many cases. Remember those jumping, dancing, animated GIFs in the early years, followed by an avalanche of Flash SWFs in the later years?

Eventually, bad web sites stagnate, and many die. They had no reason to exist - other than the site publisher's desire to "get on the web", and certainly none to fuel their ongoing existence. Yet many others do continue to exist.

I suspect the same may happen - if it hasn't already started to happen - to blogs.

(I'll indulge myself in a little back-patting here - I'm glad to say, judging by Exchangepedia's growth in number of visitors and pageviews every week, that it's likely filling a need and visitors get some useful information here.)

A number of very good blogs related to messaging, Exchange, AD, Windows platform, et al exist out there - including some linked in the Blogroll section of this blog.

Also important to note - blogging software/services provide an inexpensive or even free Content Management System (CMS) - one thing that probably didn't exist or at least wasn't as common and mature, during the previous growth phase of the web. This makes it a lot easier to post new content, as frequently as one likes. That's a big value-add. Increasingly, I'm seeing many enterprising web publishers use the same CMS used in blogs to publish "regular" web sites.

As with print publications like magazines, books, newspapers, et al - consumers of information (which is you, dear visitor :) - will choose to visit blogs that provide the content they're looking for or interested in, in a well-designed (not to be confused with "over-designed") or presentable format.

Having said that, yes, there is a place in this ecosystem for wikis and video. In many cases, these can be blended or merged with blogs. The Exchange team blog is a fine example - it has a good amount of video content now - you can see folks like Paul Bowden, Scott Schnoll, Becky Benfield, "The ExchangeShell Duo" Vivek Sharma & Mihai Jalobeanu, and even Terry Myerson (GM of Exchange Server group) talk about different pieces of Exchange, walk you through different procedures or demonstrate new features.

It doesn't seem very likely that blogs as a medium will go away any time soon. Just my opinion, and not a prediction by any means.