The nature of blogs

I have been thinking about the evolution of blogs for some time now.

When I started my first blog on Livejournal way back in 2003, they were considered the preserve of the young, the bored and the geeky. The majority of blogs were highly personal, more like an online diary chronicling feelings, hopes and events in everyday life. Because of the aforementioned user groups, there was a lot of angst, memes and unintelligible waffle about computer developments.

My old blog dwindled away. There were many reasons (my third year dissertation was a definite factor) but the main one was that blogs had lost their appeal for me. The new kid on the block, Facebook, was more exciting, more accessible, more exclusive. Facebook used elements of blogging in its Notes application, but the interactivity was shortened by speeding the process up. Facebook was about groups, and photos, and automatic updates. Myspace became the new place for emo kids, Facebook distracted the bored (and sometimes got them fired) and geeks had already moved on from both anyway.

Now, Twitter is website de jour. No space for long, reflective posts there, oh no. It's short, sharp, shite, every minute, every day. Sometimes it seems if you aren't on Twitter you aren't worth listening to.

So what has happened to the humble weblog? Has it been discarded as outdated technology, like chatrooms and automatic messengers. It has grown up. Like all technology that once was new and now is old, it suddenly seems much easier to understand. The boundaries between news and opinion blur on blogs - bloggers are rarely objective, but are a valuable source of information. Bloggers tend to be serious professionals seeking genuine debate, and a blog's interactivity - its hyperlinks and comments - makes it an ideal place for discussion of any subject.

Now, politicians and businesses are blogging, with agendas naturally but also with genuine desire to get in touch with their constituents and consumers.

The media adopted blogs to save their credibility: trust us, say bloggers, we are here and we are answerable to your views. You can disagree with us and we can reply directly to you - isn't that better than a letter to the editor? Journalists no longer control the news - they are fighting to stay one step ahead of the man on the street. Blogs give them to the chance to get the next story first.

Of course, the real question is: where do blogs go from here?