BuzzMetrics/Mouthpiece has a fantastic statistic – further analysis of a survey of awareness of the term ‘blog’ showed that two thirds of blog readers had never heard of the word blog or did not know what a blog was.
This is great news, it spells ubiquity. Memes need a buzzword to catch on, but by now blogs are more than online diaries.
The weblog publishing model, with built in syndication, tracking, real-time search, permanent, item based archiving and linking and easy to use publishing tools is the way everything will eventually be published on the web.
With magazines and professional websites being blog driven, blog refers to the way something is published not what. There is no more need to know what a blog is than know what an internal combustion engine is if you drive a car.
This is a paradigm shift as important as the browser. Web 1.0 was about reading (browsing and searching), Web 2.0 is about publishing.
For the investors that are looking to invest in blogs or RSS – that’s like investing in HTML, the big story is publishing.