Never having done the usenet thing, I didn't know what the phrase "September that never ended" meant. I know, I just lost my geek status... If I ever had one... Anyway, people are afraid the same thing will happen to blogs due to AOL's soon to be released blogging tools.
It will definitely be interesting to see how tools such as technorati scale into the new audience (I mention that one in particular because Dave Sifry stopped by once and left a comment and that will leave him forever on my list of excellent people... Never get too big to say hi to the little people!). As the population of the blogosphere swells, it will become more important for such tools to perform well, as without them we won't be able to handle the large amounts of information present, nevermind monitor our online social networks or follow the latest meme.
Another thing to watch will be how the existing more fully featured blog/cms packages take advantage of AOL's software as a way to get "newbies" ramped up and into more advanced uses of the technology. For example, will the upper echelon of AOL's bloggers become the target market for the pro version of TypePad? Mena hints that this might be the case, and since I know she, Ben, and Anil are not stupid people, they must be thinking about how to take advantage of such a large number of people being introduced to the blogosphere.
The bottom line: with Google buying Blogger, SixApart getting funding, AOL and others introducing their users to publishing, and new technologies such as camera equipped phones, we're about to see another mutation of the web as we know it. I for one am pretty excited. Are you?
Little people?!? Methinks thou dost protest too much. :-)
Keep up the great posts, I'm intrigued and can't wait to see what AOL's entry to the blog world will do...
Dave
Thanks for stopping by again Dave. I appreciate the compliment. I'll try to keep up good posting, you make sure you keep technorati running when the unwashed hordes from AOL begin to enter the blogosphere. I'd be very disappointed if it lost the ability to index new content within an hour. I still find that stat to be amazing and I bandy it around as often as possible.