Blog Predictions 2007 - An Internet Meme January 1, 2007
Posted by Andrew Wee in : blogging , trackbackEvery week, yet another journalist or online marketer predicts the Death of Blogging. Ironicially, sometimes these ‘predictions’ are made by bloggers.
Far from dying, there’s a resurgence in blogging, judging by the flow of private equity and growth of blog networks.
Just look at the nearly 1,200 submissions for the Round 5 submissions for the 9rules Blog Network or check the stats at the Blog Network List. Darren Rowse’s b5media blog network got a nice chunk of capital funding too.
2007 will see a further evolution of blogging as we know it.
Perhaps ‘blogging’ (a truncation of weblog) may evolve as a term to fully encompass what it represents.
Here’re 4 trends I see this year.
- Offline to Online Content Migration
Even without Amazon and Google’s efforts to digitize content for the Internet, a multitude of content publishers are bringing more content online every day.
Besides info portals, such as About.com and Wikipedia, individuals bloggers are blogging about their pet topics.
Aside from quoting online news sources, bloggers often cite print media, cable television, movies and other old line media (I guess this year someone will start call it media 1.0?). During this process, it’s inevitable that more content will migrate from a paper-based medium to an electronic one.
It only means that the online will will only continue to get more info-rich.
At the same time, it also means that third world countries where dial-up Internet connections (remember those?) at speeds of 28.8 kbps (that’s kilobits, not megabits) will only get further stratified by the digital divide.
Beyond food, water and shelter, the info-rich online environment will provide an opportunity to accelerate progress in the developing world.
- Blog Income Monetization Opportunities Increase
Bloggers increasingly have a number of options to generate income from their blogs.
Options like Google Adsense publishing, paid content posting (from the likes of PayPerPost), banners and text links, affiliate marketing and CPA networks, provide options for bloggers to go beyond just posting on a ‘passion’ (ie unpaid) basis to considering blogging as an alternative to a 9-to-5 job.
For newer bloggers however, it will take some time before they get their rhythmn going.
And I’d still advice newer bloggers to build up good content and develop a following before cramming as much adsense and banners on your blogs.
These monetization strategies generally require planning to create quality content, effectively publicize your blog, generate sufficient viewership and readership numbers, to successfully create a decent income from your blogging efforts.
Most bloggers will be able to generable a couple of hundred dollars to a thousand dollars worth of blogging-related income once they learn the ropes. But to step up to the next level of a professional blogger, it’ll require effective blogging strategies. (For which I’m currently developing products to address those needs).
- Blogging Goes The Rich Media Route
Perhaps it’s due to it’s traditional association with maintaining an online diary, but blogging still remains very text-based. You might sometimes get the occassional graphic or photo accompanying the posts.
To date, the number of blogs with audio or video still remains quite low. In fact, a number of blog directories have dropped the vlog (or video blog) category altogether this year, due to underwhelming demand.
Attaching a video from YouTube can sometimes be a bugbear (even if it’s as simple as pasting HTML code into your blog).
Plus, you’ve probably encountered the ‘bandwidth traffic jam’ which hits many of these video hosting sites at peak hours.
In the coming year, we might see more Internet bandwidth expanding as Internet Service Providers buy bigger chunks of bandwidth, and increase bandwidth to the video service providers.
We might even see new video caching services available which will help ease the video bandwidth bottleneck.
As for the immediate future, podcasting looks like it has the next lowest barrier of entry, especially as bloggers become more adept at audio applications like Audacity.
Looking for inspiration? Check out Webmaster Radio
- RSS Goes Mainstream
Email went mainstream approximately in the mid 1990s, when email addresses started appearing on business cards, despite the fact that email has been around since the 1960s.
The predecessors to RSS (really simple syndication) were developed in the mid-1990s. And although push-type services like BackWeb and Pointcast were a little ahead of the curve, bloggers are among the early adopters of RSS services.
To date most casual Internet surfers have no idea what RSS is, much less how to subscribe to a RSS feed. (You could’ve included me in that category about half a year ago).
Added to that is the fact that RSS readers tended to be web-based or required third party applications to access. Which makes RSS a mess for most net surfers to get into.
Will 2007 be the year that RSS readers become more user friendly? (I still have problems successfully subscribing to Atom and RSS feeds sometimes)
Here’s a thought, if all email clients supported RSS feeds and even better, RSS appeared as almost indistinguishable from email, wouldn’t we see widespread adoption of RSS?
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The Blogging Predictions 2007 meme
Those were my blogging predictions for 2007 and I intended to launch an Internet meme off this post.
(check out the classic Leeroy Jenkins World of Warcraft Internet meme. Avoid if you’re offended by gamer vulgarity)
Here’s the meme topic: What’re your Blogging Predictions in 2007? (Include your top prediction or a selection of your expected trends)
How to play:
- Blog about the meme topic
- Include a trackback to this post at: –> Blog Predictions 2007 Meme Trackback
- Pass it on to another 5 bloggers.
Come back here and check out the trackbacks for the link madness. What better way to start out 2007, eh?
To kick things off, I’ll send this to a selection of 20 blogs:
- 9rules Network Official Blog
- Darren Rowse AKA Problogger
- Yaro Starak - Entrepreneur’s Journey
- Apogee Weblog
- Rachit Dayal
- Jeremy Schoemaker AKA Shoemoney
- Andrea Schoemaker AKA PlanetAndrea
- Neil Patel
- RumblePup
- Robyn Tippins AKA Sleepyblogger
- Chris Hooley - ThinkBait
- Michael Gray - Graywolf
- Andy Beard
- Scott Jangro
- Kevin Nair
- Shawn Collins
- Steven Wong
- Gobala Krishnan
- Rashenbo
- Dazzling Girl
And lest I forget, the TickMe bloggers crew:
which includes fellow 9ruler Cameron Olthuis
hmm…this is almost too much work for the new year…
PS: If you’d like to play, do your own meme post and trackback to: Internet meme trackback
PPS: Meme project updates can be found at: Blogging Meme Reloaded
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Hello Andrew,
Thanks for the “tag”. I’ve worked on my post… although, I’m going to have to think about who I tag in turn!
[...] Fellow 9rules member Andrew Wee has posted a meme to the Notes section of 9rules. In his meme, Andrew asks bloggers to predict the 2007 blogging trends. People have been blogging since the days of Xanga and Livejournal (oh yeah you know the anime crowd) but commercial blogging is something rather new with the rise of the Web 2.0 era. What changes are in store for 2007? Let’s take a look: [...]
[...] In what appears to be a spin-off from the “5 things you didn’t know about me” meme that has been floating around the blog-o-sphere (and which I so far have managed to avoid), Andrew Wee has made some predictions on blogging for this new year, and invited others to participate. Here is my take: [...]
I don’t use a RSS reader, but I do read 9rules which uses RSS to pull in entry data. In fact I see 9rules as a easier to use RSS reader, so I think you’ll see a lot of websites using RSS to pull together and aggregate data in the most convenient matter.
Readability will become a huge factor for me in the coming year.
[...] The meme, set to cover four predictions on what we can expect to happen in the blogosphere/new media world in 2007 was started by 9rules member Andrew Wee, who posted the idea on the Notes section of the 9rules Network website. [...]
[...] –> Blog Predictions 2007 - An Internet Meme [...]
I would really like to see a comparison of ‘other sites’ compared to ‘blogs’ and their popularity on the web. I did a small comparison of technorati vs. WSJ Opinion Journal and the numbers are quite staggering:
http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/12/21/written-by-fools-to-be-read-by-imbeciles/
I could not agree with you more. The next evolution is blog aggregation and networks… but bloggers will continue to rule.
Hi Doug,
not surprising.
i think the bulk of the WSJ demographic doesnt install alexa toolbars, so there’d be a discrepancy even if the readership figures were fairly close.
online mirrors offline.
just as you’d have print media journalist with a following, so too, you’d have bloggers with large followings too.
2007 Blog Predictions Meme…
I\’ve been tagged by fellow 9ruler, Andrew Wee, regarding his Blog Predictions 2007 Meme. I\’ll play. Here are two blog predictions for 2007……
[...] Andrew Wee has started a blogosphere prediction meme, and has been passing it around to 9rules members among others. [...]
[...] Internet Meme by Andrew Wee (Whoisandrewwee.com) [...]
[...] I’m already feel a zen-like calm as I feel the traffic returning (especially from the URL pointers from the blogging meme I’d launched and incoming links from Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger writing projects) [...]
[...] Tidak mengherankan jika seorang penulis blog di Singapura Andrew Wee mengetengahkan apa yang disebut Blog Prediction 2007. Apa yang akan terjadi di dunia blog tahun ini. Berikut pandangan Andree: [...]
[...] Blog Predictions 2007 [Hijacked from Who is Andrew Wee] [...]