First there was trying to explain blogging to people - 'it's an online diary' seems to register - and now the humble blog is spawning its own sub-sets. Now blogging has hit the big time, the inevitable attempt to categorise, jargonise and a whole other bunch of '-ise's is starting to take root. As the great Ice Cube prophetically said, 'giving our music [read: blogging] away to the mainstream, don't you know they ain't down with the team.'
Now there's moblogging (surely the Ice Cube thought this name up?) which is putting words and pictures on the web via your mobile phone and now nanopublishing (or mo money mo blogging?), a form of micro-publishing, with the aim of making profits from blogs. This might be in the form of taking advertising on the blog, requesting donations from readers or even good old affiliate links from Amazon. With the likes of Google investing heavily in blogging software (Google owns Blogger.com now) the humble blog is becoming big business. Will it be the next internet bubble, only time will tell, but given its take-up and the once bitten twice shy business mentality now dominating online, it's likely that blogging dollars are here to stay.
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