Originally Posted by WEG Cory

Blogs are in essence, a free CMS that allows content to be presented in an organized fashion to end users. A blog is not a specific type of content, its a cost effective and specific type of presentation of content.

The reason I bring this up is because I see a lot of discussion involving blogs which seem to intertwine blogs to specific content. Because of blogs such as TMZ.com (and the like), we have been sold on the idea that a blog is opinionated / journalistic / personal text driven content. For the past couple of years, the adult industry has began merging the TGP concept with the blog concept. This is being done because:

A) Its easy. Many webmasters seek easy solutions that allow them to mass produce; While I think the days of mass production are coming to an end due to changes in Google, as well as an ever growing sector of jaded (wiser) consumers, using a blog to present TGP content isn't compromising the integrity of the blog; on the contrary, it actually demonstrates the software quite nicely.

B) The software is free. This is something that is consistently overlooked and I will touch on that more shortly, as it is a very important point to understand.

C) Search engine listings. Webmasters have a history of pounding out the production of pages and setups that are targeted at exposing a (weakness / opening) in search engines. This commonly leads to duplicate content issues which often times results in SE penalties, but more importantly, lead to a setup that isn't nearly as profitable as it once was. Consumers grow wise to the setups, even if they don't understand the reasoning.

When the New York Times had to make the dreaded progression to an online format, this presented two enormous stressors: 1) Moving away from paper posed a huge financial threat to the business model. 2) How on earth could you possibly move that content into a system as organized as the native format?

They realized that stressor one was something that had to be looked past for now, however, stressor two was clearly an issue of development. As everyone knows, development can be a huge financial strain. Maybe $100k invested? Who knows? You have to consider more than just actual developers time, you have to also add in an entirely new training module for past and future employees (most of which were most likely not open to moving from a typewriter to a word processor).

Now where is the primary source of online news coming from? Blogs. And that's because it is a solution, not a style. If wordpress were outright packaged today, I would guess it would go for $15k or much more? I threw a number out there, but you get the idea. This is where the "free" portion plays such a heavy role in defining the concept, it gave everyday users an ability to present content in an organized manner, without the heavy costs or development time.

So moving forward with the blog now redefined conceptually, we have a completely new use for it. Rather than looking at it from a content perspective, we appeal more to the content management perspective, and that is extremely important as it opens up the uses and gives us insight into the future.

Are blogs going away? If you take into consideration what I wrote above, the answer is obviously no. They are simply going to mutate in ways that make them more useful and possibly in ways that present development cost (by developers looking to cash in).

So not only are blogs not going away, they are likely to become more useful than ever. People are always seeking content, and people are always looking to distribute content. TGP software is only useful for TGP's. Blog software opens up a wealth of possibilities. Using TGP as a relative comparison to the blog model is irrelevant, as the two are not one in the same.

The point? Blogs are not going away and if you are thinking outside of the box, you can likely find a great use for the software.

If anyone has any questions, I would love to help where I can. I will watch the thread closely. I expect if this actually goes anywhere, a few more people will contribute answers / solutions / thoughts.

Thanks,