I stumbled across a rather interesting article published in ‘Echos’, the famous French financial paper, on December 18th. A report by Gartner seems to suggest that blogging may be a thing of the past, sooner rather than later! The original article (in French) can be found here.
Here are few figures to illustrate Gartner’s point:
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There are currently 260M blogs on the www, out of which 55M are active
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Only 2% of bloggers frequently blog and contribute to other blogs
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Facebook and myspace respectively lost 12% and 4% of users between August-September 2006
Gartner argues that blogging as a phenomenon has entered the public consciousness in a big way. However, there are limits to the growth of even a Web 2.0 phenomenon like blogging, as the initial excitement about it has begun to be replaced with a more rational view of how blogging technologies should be used. This leads us to ponder whether there is a peak point in blogging growth, after which the phenomenon will become the norm.
Gartner’s Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2007 and Beyond (Dec 1, 2006)
I don’t think this is the end of blogs quite yet, however as a myspace member I can understand why people lose interest in so called on-line communities sites. There’re fun at the beginning but tend to become rather repetitive after a while.
Question time!
How do you, as a blogger, foresee the future of blogs? 
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