Bloggers shouldn’t stop writing if they have useful things to write about. I agree that some blogs are used to promote companies or products. Those blogs aren’t useful, but the blogs that are written about useful topics are relevant and informative. I read blogs everyday and write about once a week.

Very Interesting! If just one article could generate this much interest and start a whole new topic of discussion, then I say "blog on".

I’m gonna go with Brad’s comments-

"There are still hundreds and thousands of blogs online that are still part of the true blogging experience in that they aren’t monetized and don’t promote any items.  Those folks blog about things because they enjoy it and it gives them a voice."

Well said! There are several categories of blogs ranging from personal blogs to corporate ones. In the same way as personal blogs give people a voice, corporate blogs provide an additional marketing avenue for a company.

Blogs are as relevant as they have ever been. Mr Boutin’s article for one, proves this.

Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter are probably used for marketing purposes just as much if not more than blogs. Sure there are sites like sponsoredreviews where blog owners get paid to post about someone;s product or site but it represents a vry small fraction of the blogosphere. Besides I have done tesys and wordpress blogs have always been indexed and ranked better than satic sites. there are so many SEO assiting plugins that help in that regard.

I agree that Blogs are crowded by crap but its easy to distinguish the good from the bad and the ugly…  What we are reading now is a blog, so why are we still reading it if we think this is not relevant anymore?

Chris – first, great blog and I really enjoy your work.

As for Wired, this sounds like either linkbait or unbridled emotion driving the keyboard.  Blogging has changed in recent years but declaring it dead and old seems like a prediction that human nature is going to change this year. 

Blogs can be compared to restaurants where conversation occurs.  They can have an ambiance, a personality and they can be appropriate venues for some occaisions and not others.  Declaring the written blog dead is like saying all Italian food or all Mexican food is out and only the cool people are eating at the new restaurant. 

People like different venues for the same reason they like different foods: they enjoy them.  The same people can like different restaurants and eat at different places in the same week.  They can have intense busines lunches, hot dates and casual time at a Friday night high school football game.  Venues don’t become obsolete because new venues arrive.  Thinking of blogging as a technology and not a venue is an identity crisis for the speaker, not an relevance crisis for the venue.  I’ve got a ton of people contacting me at InnovativeEconomy.com about how blogging is helping them in commercial and non-commercial ways.

Didn’t you talk about a blog sold for $2.2 Million dollars recently?

There’s your answer if you’re looking at value…

Yes there are some blogs that are only spam and ads, but that is already been appearing on twitter and facebook also.  like any media, chose what you like, and ignore the rest.

Did you know that this comment form doesn’t work at all in Opera?

But on topic…

Take the most exciting medium ever created (the web), with fantastic opportunities for layout and to combine text, images, audio and video. But then tell everyone that text is the main thing and encourage them to use content management systems, all of which look pretty much the same: two columns, three columns. With limited, difficult and boring options for including images, other media and ads.

A system that prioritises ‘the latest’, regardless of whether that is the most interesting or relevant content that you’ve created over the years.

Ease of use and accessibility for people who don’t want to (or can’t) learn HTML is put before creativity. It’s a system for people who want to shovel content onto pages as quickly and easily as possible.

Surfers are getting bored with so many sites that all look the same. I predict a return to more static pages, with innovative (and tight) design. Yes it does take longer to give every item a different design. But if you’re organised, creative, know what you’re doing and have a system in place, it’s viable and a unique selling point in a world that all looks the same.

If you’re interested in having a longterm presence on the web there is no future using here-today-gone-tomorrow services such as MySpace or Facebook as any part of your core operation. Get your own domain name and hosting.

Yes it may seem as if Facebook will be around for ever. But does anyone remember GeoCities? The place where everyone created a page ten years ago.

The other thing that Myspace and Facebook have in common with GeoCities is the horrible user experience: overloaded pages and servers. People are getting sick of that too.

It’s rather like the banking crisis: there was a period when every rule that banks had operated under went out of the window. Lately we’ve done the same with everything we learnt as webmasters over the past ten years. Creativity has taken second place, pages are slow and overloaded. 

For the man in the street, the novelty of being able to write, comment and upload his own videos hasn’t yet worn off. But I predict it will. No matter how easy you make it, creating anything is hard work and the majority of people would rather sit on their ass and consume. I know lots of people will squeal at this suggestion, but I’ve been involved in helping people create media for 25 years. I’ve seen lots of trends come and go, systems promted, and enthusiasm fade away every time, except for a very small core who continue.

The financial crisis can only accelerate this, as many people realise they are making no money from blogging and look towards more profitable avenues.

As for commercialism, if you look at the history of online, and particularly the adult industry (AVSes and TGPs for example), you will see that often something new comes along and eventually it is killed by people who introduce systems that ‘industrialise’ and flood it.

But I finally started one this month and for me it’s not so much to spread my views but to get more traffic to my main website which is adult related and interest in adult content or topics doesn’t seem to be affected much by what ever else is going on in the world, folks will always be horny..economy or other issues or not.

I don’t have the get noticed issue that much because I have built mty network that I can promote it to directly.

I don’t want to be unfriendly, but sorry….this is the worst question I ever heard… from so called experts…! I cant take your question seriously!