The future of blogging

The latest issue of BusinessWeek has an interesting interview with Mena Trott of Six Apart, the company that provides the software on which this blog is based, on the future of the blog. Some of the interesting issues raised include how blogging has brought a more personal tone to mainstream journalism, images, audio, and video being integrated into blogs, and introducing filters for readers and authors to select views into the blog. On another note, Six Apart is rumored to have recently raised $12 million in a highly bid C-round fund raising, with investors said to include Intel, giving a pre-money valuation of the company of around $100 million. Blogging is hot. Robert Scoble of Microsoft comments: “Well done Mena! We all forget just how bad things were for geeks five years ago.” Indeed, the massive front-page success of blogging is one of the centerpieces of the technology revival. I often find myself boggling at how transformational blogging and related technologies really are. We’ve only just scratched the surface here. Tradtional boundaries between content creators and consumers will dissolve. Assessment of the authority and integrity of any content will entirely change. Blogging is strongly accelerating the already powerful shift towards transparency, which impacts every domain of society and business. Email may begin to play a quite different role in our communication than it has over the last years. There are many other implications that are just unfolding. Very exciting times ahead.