I attended an interesting event yesterday, hosted by the FT Alphaville team. These guys (and gals) are probably the best business bloggers out there at the moment. So they should be, with a staff of six and the FT behind them.
However, the debate was about what to do next and many of the bloggers in attendance were at a loss for what to do. Some fundamental questions still remain unanswered, why blog? Should it make money? What do you want to achieve?
The great thing is that everyone has a different answer, some want fame, some want to just express themselves, others are promoting a product or company of their own; many are journalists.
Perhaps most interesting was the twitter split. When I get the chance I have a great idea for twitter which I want to see if I can make work and whether it is legal. However, the split was on the bloggers' having time to do everything. Fine for those in new media 'journalism' industry to go on about gadgets, widgets and twittering. But for many there is not enough time to try and use every available channel.
In this respect I think the professionals in the end will beat the personal blogs who do it just for fun. They have more time to use the new technologies, more access to good content and better presentation. As such, blogging will stratify with a very long tail. Niche blogs are simply not a business model, but perhaps are useful tool for raising profile.
Let's see how many of the Big Brother contestants start writing blogs when they are evicted to test the theory.
