53 million blogs by 2006, will anyone care anymore?
Published June 11th, 2005 in E-PRPerseus reports that there will be 53 million blogs (they’re obviously not all active) by the end of the year (courtesy of Steve Rubel.) While some may rejoice and hail a new era of blogging, I think it’s more a sign that as the blogging phenomenon expands it will eventually implode.
In another post today, Steve quotes Robert Manning, Director of Interactive Communications for UPS, who basically says blogs are overhyped. Steve reckons that FedEx should start blogging now and get a competitive advantage. It’s a fair point, but what happens when UPS start blogging, and then every single other competitor also jumps in on the act. Eventually all these voices will begin to drown each other out (note: i said begin to drown rather than drown because I still believe that there is a point in blogging.)
All of this highlights the fact that blogging is a communications tool, not the great white hope that some people think it is.
Setting up a corporate blog mat get you in the news today, but in a few years time it’ll probably be so common place that the only way it would get you in the news is if you didn’t have a blog. For example, IBM recently published its blogging guidelines and got widespread coverage in the blogosphere. After the next thousand companies publish their blogging guidelines, how many people do you think will still get excited?
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I think you’ve a fairly one sided view of blogging … it’s not just for coporations to get new customers, or people like you and me reading - if we’re never going to be customers. That only happens now because it’s new.
Take the logistics example you use above - there’s no problem with UPS, FEDEX, BAX, etc. etc. having a blog - it’s just like a web site : it will be a tool for existing customers as much, and more so, than it is for prospects (logistics companie don’t really do sales on-line).
So I doubt it will implode, but rather be a standard tool like a web site (and hopefully RSS!)
Yeah but in terms of positioning or the extremes Scoble harps on about it, blogging will only have so much of an impact before it becomes a standard technique like any other.
I am extremelly novice in blogs and bloggings. What makes this tech interesting to me is the possibility to support new practices of collaboration more aking with the global community we live in today. It has the chance to bring some anarchy to an extremelly organized world of mass media, politics, PR or public image. If the anarchy is strong enough and its last enough to force as to construct new bridges and to cultivate new ways of living together, it will become relevant , alive and dynamic. Maybe it will decay, but its decay will not be related with the novelty factor, but with the failure or success in creating the space for new forms of social convivencia to emerge.
As usual