In our next generation blogging series we have been highlighting what’s coming.  Saving time is blogging is a big key and I’ve been hearing about some great new products that will do just that.  Look back here in February and I will pre-announce a new product for you.

In the meantime, keep in mind, whenever you are buying/using blogging software, especially if your selecting new software, be sure that it is simple and easy to use; this will Save You Time in blogging.  If you can’t get a post in and looking good in a few minutes, you got the wrong program.

Remember, you may be using your selected package for YEARS!  So, spend a little time and select the right software for you. 

Well, almost all computers…  What is Next Generation Blogging?

It’s people who have never used or managed a blog, now getting into full gear… and…

it’s experienced bloggers going to the next level… an example that I recently saw of next generation blogging was 2advanced.com blog. They are already world class with flash, but, their blog is rather cutting edge as well.

In January, we will be discussing these trends and will give you more samples.

Best Regards…

Over at Technorati they just announced a bunch of new functionality to help extract more useful information when searching for blogs.

Technorati is one of the leading blog search engines that helps you make sense of all the information floating around the Blogosphere.

Check it out. Some neat charts and definite improvements to results layout and functionality. Technorati is a great way to see where your blog traffic is coming from and to monitor your daily results.

See what happens when Budget Rent a Car advertises on a bunch of blogs in Placing Ads in Some Surprising Spaces

“What is most valuable about nontraditional media like blogs, Mr. Deaver said, is their ability to “actively engage the consumer” compared with “passive TV spots” and other traditional choices.”

If anything 2005 has shown that blogs are an increasingly valuable tool for advertisers trying to reach targetted demographics and with each successful case study published will demonstrate that advertising on blogs is a smart and economical alternative to traditional advertising vehicles.

I was looking around for early Christmas gifts and was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of electronic gifts available this year. Practically every gadget you can think of is available to you whether it be your computer, games, mp3 music players or digital cameras. Simply overwhelming even for the geekiest of the geeks out there. Of course the internet is the main force pushing all of our personal technology adoption curves. Tough to keep up no?

“An interesting phenomenon is coming to a monitor near you, perhaps the one you are looking at right now. The days of convergence are upon us. The trend towards the merging of media via the Internet is already causing significant cultural shifts as witnessed by the power bloggers have exercised in relation to TV and print journalism. What a difference an era makes”

New World Wide Web Emerging :: Meet the New Network

BlogExplosion has seen many entrepreneurial members building their own blog services and developing their blogs to the point where they are actually making advertising dollars! Did you know that Flickr started the same way ?

“How do you create the future of Web apps? By accident. Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield (above) are the husband-and-wife team behind Flickr, the photo-sharing site that launched in February 2004 and quickly got so popular that Yahoo acquired it a year later. Flickr wasn’t born as a fully realized idea–in fact, it wasn’t even originally for photo sharing. But its building blocks make up a successful Web 2.0 application. Here’s how it evolved.”

Looks like Gawker Media will be shutting down its gambling blog Oddjack early Decemeber for non-performance against other blogs that Gawker manages.

FBNY Exclusive: Gawker Media Shutters First Site

In response to several questions by mediabistro, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton posted a comment on his own site this afternoon:

Blog titles are like new TV shows. Some make it; some don’t. Oddjack, Gawker Media’s gambling site, was one of the ones that didn’t. And it’s best to cancel the show sooner rather than later.

We are starting to see clear results being reported from businesses around the world singing the praises of keeping a company blog.

Great article here Are Blogs A Meaningful Tool For Startups and Small Businesses? talking about why blogs make sense.

Although political blogging is not getting the same amount of press it was at the time of the last US Presidential Elections, Connecticut political bloggers are still going strong. With blogging as a whole evolving so quickly I wonder what the Blogosphere will look like come the 2006 Congressional elections and then the 2008 Presidential elections? Imagine if Mrs. Clinton ran for office in 2008 and the commotion that would create alone…. 

Read : Political bloggers thriving in Connecticut

Interesting article here about whether people will still be using the term BLOG next year. Some think people will lose the word blog and start to go with a traditional “website” tag.

The article No Blogs Next Year talks about just that!

“Next year the whole blog phenomenon will slowly fold back into the core of the Web. The fascinating thing, though, is the opening of the content floodgates. Certainly, Gawker’s properties are written by professionals. But their inclusion into Yahoo! News is part of a larger initiative by Yahoo! to integrate what it calls social media into its offering. That’s intriguing and exciting, as it represents a real new source of interesting content, narrative, and opinion. You just won’t call it a blog.”

Personally I don´t agree with this article at all beyond making some good points about making it easier for you to advertise on blogs in the future (when there is money to be made you can always count on that). Secondly for companies like Gawker now integrating their content with more traditional media, there may be benefits to losing the blog “tag” and just calling yourself a regular website with featured content. For the other 100 zillion other blogs out there that do not have those luxuries the BLOG tag will stick. 

Beyond BlogExplosion being heavily invested in the word BLOG in all of our domains, we look to one obvious and simple reason to reach our own conclusions about the future use of the word BLOG.

The word BLOG is short (4 letters) and is easy to say, recognize and pronounce no matter what part of the world you are from. If you watch TV these days you see the word BLOG being used all the time. The word BLOG actually means something to people especially when you compare it to a term like RSS (nothing simple about this syndication) which generally does not mean anything at all to people except some technical term.  Studies have indicated the term blog has seen improved awareness despite the fact that many people don´t even know they are visiting a blog. To me that tells me the word BLOG will be here with us for a very long time still. That word association will not go away anytime soon.

So in conclusion although the way you view and find blogs may change in the future with the blending of feeds, social networks, blog networks, static content, user generated content and advertising we strongly feel the word BLOG will continue to be used as the “catch-all” to collectively describe the blogging process. We will just have to wait and see how it turns out next year.