John Battelle’s Blogging Predictions for 2008

Two well-known people discussing the future of media, publishing, advertising, and blogging. One is former Microsoftie and corporate blog advocate Robert Scoble. The other is former editor of Wired Magagzine, The Industry Standard (trying for a comeback), and author of best-selling The Search John Battelle. Battelle now heads up the rising Federated Media. Battelle has a reputation for accurate prognostication, so I now look forward to them every year.

Here’s what I took away from watching this:

• AOL could provide an alternative to AdWords/AdSense in the online advertising space.
• High-quality content that stimulates conversation is a driver of attention and for advertising, that means more money.
• Being in business nowadays is like being a musician: both create content, both need services designed specially to meet their needs (recording company for musicians, Federated Media for online business).
• There are two kinds of media: mercenary and missionary. Mercenary is purely for profit and missionary is for passion or a cause. Guess which one is ultimately more powerful at attracting and keeping an audience community.
• The line between what is media and what is a service is blurring.
• Live video-streaming and podcasting via mobile devices will be a space to watch closely in 2008.
• High-quality content, an engaged community, and pageviews are what FM looks for when signing new blogs into its network.
• FM is working on some sort of Zeitgeist-like reporting overall for their network, somewhat like Google’s Zeitgeist.
• FM’s work is all done on a custom platform that handles everything.
• Developing a unique way of measuring success is a point of conversation and a differentiator. How do you track, measure, and report on attention, interaction, or community? Terms such as search equity, conversation equity.
• There is a gap in business-related content and services that needs to be filled.
• We’re getting to a point in blogging where we’re going to have reinvent the interface. (I see this already happening with the incredible surge in Magazine-style WordPress Themes.)
• There’s only two things that matter in video: one is technology, the other is quality content.
• You can start a company nowadays for practically nothing.
• Next big thing: social search?