The term “blog” has been in use for around eleven years now, and there are about 120,000 new blogs created every day (according to Technorati). Of course, not all of them remain active for very long (too many people start blogs and then quit a couple of months later).
There are plenty of people saying that blogging is a “trend” and that people will just stop blogging when it all dies down. Yeah, right. So, people who say blogs are just another trend think that CNN is going to shut down their website? That Ars Technica will stop reporting on tech news?
As I’ve said before, blogs are not online journals. A blog is merely a website consisting mainly of chronologically listed articles. The average person may think of a blog as an online journal, but that viewpoint isn’t really correct. Those blogs that die after two months are mainly Blogger or LiveJournal blogs set-up by someone who never intended to be very serious about blogging.
Plus, on the subject of trends, Americans will call anything they don’t like or understand “just a trend.” Trends don’t last 10+ years! Look at Harry Potter, it’s been in the U.S. for 10 years. People call it “a trend,” but it’s on its way to becoming classic literature (there are similarities between what’s happened with Harry Potter and with books by authors like Mark Twain). I’ve had the misfortune of living through the Pokemon/Furby/Digitpets nonsense, and neither blogging nor Harry Potter are anything like that.
Blogs aren’t going anywhere. What will happen is services like LiveJournal will take a huge hit. Webjournals may be a trend, but the idea of the blog is not.
