Stuart Henshall has some interesting thoughts about how blogging is evolving for him. Ton Zijlstra followed that with more good stuff on Personal Presence Portals revisited.
From Stuart's first post on Giving up Traditional Blogging:
Instead I plan on being a more collaborative contributor. Oh I want to own my own words, and I hope create and nurture new pages to life. However, they shouldn't stop there. For the most part a blog is a static repository while the world is a living organism. I want to breath life into change. Thus I need to open source my approach to writing, sharing, and becoming part of a broader collective intelligence.
Ton adds more meat to what Stuart is saying, following several familiar themes about how blogs support conversation, knowledge management and other activities. And in the week since Stuart and Ton originally published their thoughts several others have picked up the train. (Try Technorati to find the related articles - currently 21 links from 14 sources.) And now Stuart has announced a new collaboration-based business with several others, Yi-Tan. Turns out it is something they've been cooking for a while.
These articles have been bouncing around my head for a while, and I essentially have to agree with what they are saying. Blogging is only one piece of a bigger picture. Lilia has been saying this in a number of ways as well: the blog itself isn't collaboration or a community. A blog isn't any one thing for people, but I do like the idea of a blog as a house -- or as the facade of the house that says something about the person inside; or its front porch. I keep all sorts of stuff here, and there is even more on the inside.
When it comes to collaborating and developing new ideas and new products, the blog probably isn't the best tool. But blogs themselves will continue being interesting too.