Economist.com | Blogging goes to work

Economist.com | Blogging goes to work "Will blogging—the practice of maintaining an online diary, or weblog—revolutionise journalism? Do the world's bloggers really constitute a “second superpower”, the only force on earth capable of keeping America's neo-imperialist government in check? Or is the blogging craze just an example of sound and fury signifying nothing—a re-run of the late-1990s fad for personal websites, only with easier-to-use publishing software?
While bloggers—half of whom are teenagers, according to one survey—are convinced that they are changing the world, not everyone agrees. There are, whisper it, even some people beyond the insular world of the “blogosphere” who have not even heard of blogging at all. Ross Mayfield, the founder of Socialtext, a firm based in Palo Alto, California, wants to move blogging beyond its usual constituency of teenagers and wide-eyed political activists. His company is taking a novel approach, arguing that blogging might actually be useful in business."