AP: Blogging Goes Mainstream
On Monday, The Associated Press published an interesting summary of recent developments in the weblog community. The article points to the blogging phenomenon as the next great hope for entrepreneurial activity on the Internet:
...as more people have embraced the concept, what once seemed like a passing fancy has morphed into a cutting-edge phenomenon that may provide the platform for the Internet's next wave of innovation and moneymaking opportunities.
This article goes on to draw parallels between the so-called Blogosphere and the Borg, a collective intelligence that appears in the television and movie series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek: First Contact. Although this concept is introduced by reference from someone who played a minor role in Google's acquisition of Pyra Labs, it is a bit of a digression from the other points in the article.
Todd Copilevitz from Richards Interactive is also quoted extensively in the article:
With blogging, all you really need is an articulate point of view and some dedication to reach a very broad audience.... If you read these sites long enough, you see points of intersections where the opinion makers gather. It's a phenomenon that's not on the mainstream radar quite yet, but it will be in six months.
These observations are interesting since they come from the group that has reportedly developed the marketing campaign for Raging Cow, a new milk-based soft drink to be released by Dr. Pepper in April. This marketing effort has been extensively discussed on weblogs for the past 10 days, and current thinking is that the publicity generated by it will not be that favorable.