Is blogging dead? On the contrary...

Last month, there was lots of chatter about a piece on Wired about how blogging is dead -- published through Wired's blog.  I commented on it here, and the fact that the blogger who wrote it since has been fired says something about how credible it was.

Further proving the point was a column in the last issue of The Economist about how, in fact, blogging has gone mainstream.  It very cleverly opened its argument by stating how the early A-listers, like Jason Calacanis, bemoaned how impersonal blogging has become.  In effect, this illustrates a classic "Crossing the Chasm" scenario, where blogging has leapt from the early pioneers to the majority of publishers and consumers. 

The rest of the world may well have missed the unfolding of [Calacanis'] tragedy. Behind it, however, is a bigger trend. Blogging has entered the mainstream, which—as with every new medium in history—looks to its pioneers suspiciously like death.

Leave it to The Economist to make sense of where something is headed.  Indeed, it's most powerful point on how blogging has become mainstream is its observation that businesses are embracing it.

Simultaneously, companies far outside the media industry have embraced blogging as just another business tool. They are using blogs both to get corporate messages to the public and as an internal medium for staff. Companies like Six Apart, which provides Movable Type, TypePad and other blogging tools, see firms as their most promising market.

We've certainly seen this with our clients.  What about you?  Are you still skeptical?