Gregory M. Lamb of The Christian Science Monitor on Blogs: Here to stay – with changes:
They're hip. Influential. Out there. By one estimate, there are 2 million of them posted on the Internet around the world talking about everything from knitting patterns to the war in Iraq. But as blogs – or personal weblogs – move into the limelight, they're also coming under closer scrutiny. And the conclusions are in some ways sobering.
Except for a tiny number of blogs that have gained prominence, all this techno-chattiness remains just that: an immature form of communication that has yet to gain traction with the general public, experts say. Most are moldering in cyberspace, updated only sporadically or abandoned completely. But out of this fervid experimentation are coming some new forms of communication that are already influencing public discourse.