The question in the back of the minds of most people who spend their time wandering the halls of New Media is, “exactly where is this crazy train heading?” What is the end game for blogging and what does it mean for the industries that blogging has created?

While no one can give the perfect answer to any of these questions, it doesn’t hurt to take a closer look.

The Future Of Media

As it stands, the biggest push for the professional blogger is to expand outwards. The attention economy forces expansion on anyone who wishes to grow their audience. No matter how good a blog you produce, eventually you are going to saturate your niche. When that happens, growth will slow. To counteract this, one of the easiest solutions is to start another blog in a niche that you have not fully exploited.

In that way, large bloggers are becoming a lot more like traditional media companies. Even in terms of scale, the distinction between old and new media is beginning to shrink, particularly in terms of their web presence. With blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo taking the lead, New Media is beginning to close the traffic gap, even without a built-in audience to prop it up.

Not everyone wants to be Rupert Murdoch, however. For the consultants and marketers who use blogging as a tool to further their career, the future is one where blogs will become a proxy for a resume. Especially for professionals who price their services based on their expertise, blogging is the most effective means currently available to “prove your worth.” Not only does it give you a platform to show potential clients your expertise but it also gives you an easy way to find new clients and open the channels of communication.

Along those same lines are the companies that have turned to blogging as a corporate communications tool. The next year or so will hopefully see large corporations finally getting a grasp of what they need to do in order to create effective blogs. As they become more comfortable with the platform, I imagine we will see corporate bloggers with the freedom to create the sort of personal brand that made bloggers like Matt Cutts and Robert Scoble so popular. The biggest issue on this front is trust, a little experience in the field will go a long way in engendering it.

Finally, the casual blogger. For them, I think Microblogging has a lot of potential. If most of your blogging day is spent rattling off quick links and pictures, there is no real reason for you to put up a full blown blog. Technologies like Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku are enabling people to get all of the power of blogging without much of the overhead that has kept blogging out of the mainstream.

Web 2.0 Roundup

The final question then is how does this relate to mainstream media? I think more and more, professional bloggers and mainstream media will be operating in the same space. Whatever conflicts that we currently see between the two are only going to become more exaggerated until we are finally able to reconcile the idea of blogging with whatever it is that Old Media wants us to be.

As for the rest of us, like always, the future is about growth. Where a mid-level blogger eventually lands has a lot to do with how much they are willing to put into their enterprise and for how long. The nice thing about the Internet is that the space is wide open and the barriers to entry are low. Good luck.

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