Jan
1
What does 2008 hold in store? Nobody knows for sure, but we can make some pretty educated observations. I’d like to offer mine. Feel free to add yours in the comments.
Here we go:
Video blogging will be bigger than ever
- More bloggers will start doing video.
- Online video sites like YouTube will expand their services.
- New online video services and applications will appear for direct recording and editing.
- Many smaller video sharing sites will die off, consolidation will begin.
Mobile blogging will become super hot
- Mobile blogging and video blogging will continue to converge (Qik is an example).
- More bloggers will be concerned about how their blogs look in a mobile browser.
- Travel blogging and news blogging will see growth.
Blogging itself will continue to spread and transform
- Blogging will continue to transform itself into the new journalism. Old journalists will continue to be bitter about it. More journalists will become bloggers.
- The design of blogs will continue to evolve as aspects of blogging weave their way into “normal” websites. The explosive growth of magazine and news style WordPress themes will continue. 2008 is going to see tremendous experimentation in blog design.
- Bloggers will play a bigger role in the U.S. presidential elections in 2008 than ever before.
- I think there will be rapid growth in business blogs compared to personal blogs as social networking takes over for blogging in some ways.
- The relationship between social networks and blogs will continue to evolve as new tools and services appear. Blogs will become more social, incorporating some of the functions of social networks.
It’ll be interesting to look back at this post at the end of 2008 and see how accurate it is. Care to add your thoughts on the state of blogging for 2008? You know what to do…
Photo credit: squidish under CC license
Popularity: 17% [?]
It’s a challenge just trying to keep up with this ever changing field. It’s exciting to be a part of it.
You can see all those trends already! I myself am getting ready to do some video!
Darin
Darin, absolutely. I’m only extrapolating from what’s already happening. That sounds like a safe bet, but time and time again, game-changing events have occurred that nobody foresaw, so who knows?
Video blogging will be hot for sure, no doubt. But I’m not so sure about mobile. Yes, twitter type blogging will sure get hot but people really don’t visit normal blogs from the mobile, unless it’s very important…
Ruchir, it is true that visiting blogs via mobile device isn’t very common right now. The strong growth in mobile will be on the production/broadcasting side. More people will blogging via their Blackberries and camera phones. There are a couple of startups to watch in this space already (Qik and Seesmic, to name two) and my hunch is that more will appear in 2008.
One thing we as bloggers need to always keep in mind is that other people are not like us. I never visit websites in a mobile browser, because I live in Vermont and that is just a dream for most people here. But people in San Fransisco do it all the time. We can’t accurately use our own experience as a measuring stick. As science fiction writer William Gibson once said: “The future’s already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
Michael, I think you are absolutely right. Mobile and video blogging will be huge in 2008. As Jim mentioned above, it’s a very exciting time to be a blogger. I can’t wait to see how blogging grows and changes over the next year.
I’ve been considering video blogging myself. I’d love to see some “how-to” posts from you on this Michael, including the bits that might seem simple to you if you’ve already been doing it.
That’s a great idea, JoLynn. I’ll do that.
Great, looking forward to it Michael, thanks in advance!