Some of the predictions for 2005 in John Battelle’s Searchblog are worth a read for pro blogging types looking into the crystal ball. Here is a taste of the first three:
‘1….We’ll all work on figuring out ways to stick to our principles and get paid at the same time, however, I expect that things might get more contentious before they get better, and 2005 may be a more fractious year in the blogosphere as we evolve through this process.
2…. It will get harder to innovate before it gets easier. We’ll all be surprised by the lack of what we consider “progress” in the RSS/Blogging world, and expectations of major publishing revenues will not materialize as quickly as perhaps we think they should. However, we’ll in fact be making huge strides in understanding the path forward, it just won’t seem like it….
3. There will be two to five major new sites that emerge from “nowhere” to become major cultural influencers along the lines of the political bloggers of 2004. One of them will be sold to a major publisher/aggregator for what seems like a large sum of money, driving the abovementioned #2 and #1…’
Read more predictions for 2005 at John Battelle’s Searchblog: A Look Ahead
I am considering starting a niche “blog network”. Nothing on the scale of Weblogs Inc. or Gawker, though. I am unsure whether I should buy a domain for each blog or just use website.com/blog1/ & website.com/blog2/ etc… You thoughts?