Blame that prediction on a quip by Bruce Sterling at this year's South-by-Southwest conference. It is a translation of:
"I don't think there will be that many around in 10 years"As it turns out, what Bruce was really saying is that the trendiness of blogs will have faded even though the simple publishing platform will survive. The trend-groupies will move on to whatever the new "cool" trend may be.
Although I believe the failure rate for blogs is a good indicator that the "coolness" of having a blog fades for about 60% of those who start blogging, there are notable exceptions of success that may be indicators that blogs will survive adolescence and will mature into something even better than a one-to-many publishing tool. If I could re-purpose Bruce Sterling's quip, I would say that blogs as we know them now will evolve into something (or multiple 'things') far more powerful in 10 years and will bear little resemblance to the current delivery system.
Blogs have been able to accomplish a level of online community building (even learning community building) that discussion boards, list-serves, and chat rooms have struggled to achieve. And no, I do not have hard evidence to back that statement. I have observed a serendipitous trend in some blogging communities where individuals who may never have met in-person actually choose to meet-up as a result of connections made via aggregated blogging communities. Oddly enough, many of these individuals (and groups) may rake each other over ithe coals via posts and comments but manage to demonstrate a friendly (or at least civil) level of respect and understanding when meeting in-person. For me, that is encouraging and I see it as a positive model for community discourse.
More on this later...