The blogosphere is about to get big. It is going to get big because blogs are crossing the chasm into the early mainstream market. This means that the opportunity in the blogosphere is moving down the power law curve towards what Chris Anderson calls the long tail.

the coming wave of mainstream users generally know that they are never going to be the next boing boing or engadget and These mainstreamers intuitively understand that they are going to blog in the long tail (though most won’t use that language) and that there are going to be lots of other people like them blogging there as well. Collectively, in millions and millions of ways, they are going to build the blogosphere 2.0- blogs for the rest of us.

Here are the trends:

• The mainstreamers will not blog obsessively, all day, every day. Blogs will be a tool and a facet of their lives, not their lives. I think most mainstream blogs will average annually ~2 posts/week.
• They want convenience. The better the tools/software services, the more convenient it will be for them to blog and the more they will blog. They are looking for the classic “whole product” and do not want to fuss w/difficult to use/unintegrated technologies. There is no joy in perl scripting for them.
• Blogs will become, as Jason observed, the new business card/CV and also the new refrigerator door. People will update the world on their careers in the professional section of their blogs. They will update their friends in the personal areas.
• Pictures/galleries and filesharing posts will become at least as important text-oriented posting.
• As they post more and more of their lives online, they will start to demand ways to safeguard and secure all the work they have done.
• Next-gen blogrings/community/affinity groups will become more important and will create their own mini-blogospheres, complete w/powerlaw distributions
• Folksonomies will become a concept everyone can understand and will surprise everyone w/how they evolve.

"Eric [Schmidt] had a great quote the other day. He said, 'When we said all of the world's information, we meant all.' So that means FORTUNEs from the 1930s, TV content...there's very little content we're not interested in."

Of course, the more material that can be searched means more opportunities for Google to place ads next to those search results.

The above from a Fortune article on Google got me thinking: what about text ads behind-the-firewall, at work? Sure, that's kind of like Text Ad Taboo now-a-days (business allowing other business inside their walls to make cash), but only seemingly.

Noel Smith was shy and had low self-confidence and few friends before becoming an Upward Bound student. After joining the program, she met her best friend, discovered her passion for journalism and began to challenge herself academically, she said. Read the article below.