Blogging is the next big technology trend, and I fully expect that almost everyone will have one in the next few years. Ten years ago nobody thought that every business would have a website and now you struggle to find one that doesn't.
If you haven't blogged before now, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. But take a moment to think of how much easier it is to keep in touch when you have instant messaging, email, and sms on your mobile phone.
The big advantage of blogging is that you don't have to send anything to friends and family, they can simply subscribe to your feed and read what you write whenever they want to.
Already it is becoming common to record verbal blog messages, and I imagine it won't be long until video messages gain in popularity, especially given the pace of broadband uptake.
So with that said, who are the bloggers of tomorrow, why will they be the driving force of blogging in 2006?
Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else
Bloggers in 2006
Sunday, February 26. 2006
An interesting thing has happened to blogging since about the middle of 2005. Until this time blogging had been dominated by people who were quite familiar with Internet technology, lets call them the trend-setters. But by early 2005 commentators outside of the technology industries had realised that blogging is an easy and effective way of communicating with an audience.
I believe the end of 2006 will have seen a quite profound change in the world's bloggers. I believe that by the end of 2006 you will see more grandparents keeping the family informed of their activities, keeping each other informed on issues that affect the elderly, and creating blogs that promote their interests or hobbies. After all the technology is easy to understand, is ideally suited to their needs, and in some cases doesn't even require them to install anything.
Alongside the elderly, you will see more proud parents creating blogs about their children, perhaps for the consumption of doting family members or maybe just for sharing the trials and tribulations of parenthood with other parents.
I've also wondered about pet owners, whether they would want a blog for the significant non-human in their household.
All of these people will choose blogging because writing your pages, inserting images, and responding to comments is just so easy.
Nobody needs to learn html, or puzzle over obscure stylesheet terminology, and certainly nobody needs to wonder why their webpage looks great in one browser but terrible in another.
This is why blogging will really take off in 2006, and why next year's bloggers are so important to understand. They are the people who don't care about the programming, aren't interested in tweaking the code, and frankly, just want their blog to be as usable as their digital camera or mobile phone.
For these people, the blog software that wins their loyalty is the one that makes it easiest for them to use, is the easiest to make work with their other gadgets, and has the best range of customisations like themes and plugins.
Another important thing to understand about these people. They don't have photoshop or personal webservers. They edit their images using Windows Explorer, or Google's Picasa, or the package that comes with their printer or camera. They experiment with live blogs.
Blog software needs to be good enough to let these people experiment whilst still maintaining the integrity of their blog. Theme designers need to ensure their themes are complete before releasing them, and should probably include easy to follow instructions
I believe the end of 2006 will have seen a quite profound change in the world's bloggers. I believe that by the end of 2006 you will see more grandparents keeping the family informed of their activities, keeping each other informed on issues that affect the elderly, and creating blogs that promote their interests or hobbies. After all the technology is easy to understand, is ideally suited to their needs, and in some cases doesn't even require them to install anything.
Alongside the elderly, you will see more proud parents creating blogs about their children, perhaps for the consumption of doting family members or maybe just for sharing the trials and tribulations of parenthood with other parents.
I've also wondered about pet owners, whether they would want a blog for the significant non-human in their household.
All of these people will choose blogging because writing your pages, inserting images, and responding to comments is just so easy.
Nobody needs to learn html, or puzzle over obscure stylesheet terminology, and certainly nobody needs to wonder why their webpage looks great in one browser but terrible in another.
This is why blogging will really take off in 2006, and why next year's bloggers are so important to understand. They are the people who don't care about the programming, aren't interested in tweaking the code, and frankly, just want their blog to be as usable as their digital camera or mobile phone.
For these people, the blog software that wins their loyalty is the one that makes it easiest for them to use, is the easiest to make work with their other gadgets, and has the best range of customisations like themes and plugins.
Another important thing to understand about these people. They don't have photoshop or personal webservers. They edit their images using Windows Explorer, or Google's Picasa, or the package that comes with their printer or camera. They experiment with live blogs.
Blog software needs to be good enough to let these people experiment whilst still maintaining the integrity of their blog. Theme designers need to ensure their themes are complete before releasing them, and should probably include easy to follow instructions
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