Blogging is old news now - well, to those who blog and those who download podcasts and anyone trying to keep up with the explosion of information on the web. Over the last 6 months, blogging (and RSS) is one of the most common topics I've discussed with Microsoft partners, press and just about anyone that will listen. The thing that amazes me about blogging is how quickly it has changed the way I source my "news. For about 4 years www.news.com was my homepage as I followed the tech industry. Over the last 2 years, news.bbc.co.uk has been my homepage as I can quickly keep up with UK, world, weather and most importantly sports news. That's changed again though and www.live.com is now my homepage - not because I want to push Live but simply because I can bring so much of what I want to read on to one page - and much of what I read and where I source my news is no longer from big publishers. I get my news fix from blogs almost entirely. Why?
That's not to say the big media companies haven't recognised the trend - in fact the BBC has one of the best guides to blogging/RSS I have seen. What I think it really interesting though is the way that over a very short space of time, blogs are changing the dynamic of publishing and where people go for their information. Engadget is a great example - pre Engadget, I used to go to a whole host of sites to get my gadget fix. Now, I just go to that one place as they do an amazing job of scouring stories, gathering submissions and providing a brilliant commentary on technology. Even Bill goes there now - good enough for him.... :) There is also a very good article (and ironically now a blog) on this from Trevor Butterworth at FT.com
I guess what I'm saying is that the publishing world is changing amazingly quickly. If you're reading this you probably knew that already though...Bad Language has a good piece of Blogging for Business with some great ground rules.
My concern...of the 50 blogs I now have in my reader, how do I prioritise? Hmmm