Future of Blogging

June 1, 2017

As part of the Upcycle It design challenge over on Element14, I’ve been blogging a lot on their community site. I’ve also been following with interest a discussion on why those blogs are part of the challenge. For me the key points are why I’ve been blogging all along which are:

• provide progress reports on my projects
• share and discuss ideas
• keep a record for future reference

Easier tools and richer content

James Welch asked me what I thought the future of blogging was. For me, I think those key principles will stay the same. I foresee the tools continuing to make content creation easier. For example, I recently introduced a tool called Grammarly that checks my articles make sense. I can see other tools like that coming in to supliment the blogging platforms. There have been continual advances in the blogging platforms too and I see no reason why that won’t continue. Content will be richer in the future and for Makers that will mean plans, schematics and code as part of the article with the ability to view all of those at once whilst reading.

Dynamic Content

Websites currently adapt their display based on the device that you are using but this can be extended to personalised articles and even articles that dynamically adapt on how you are reading. Pressing “more” will generate different content depending on the user. I can see interaction with websites changing too, rather than just a linear reading, AI chatbots will allow you to explore your topics interactively. Video blogging is going to need to change too, people won’t want to be watching 30-minute rambles on the detail of a process this will need to be broken up and like their text based equivalents made interactive with multiple sources of information to interact with.
For many people, living in the walled garden of their social media platforms is fine but Makers like to push the boundaries and won’t be content with that. I suspect that although those platforms will continue to grow, it won’t be something for Makers.

Geography

Despite the inward-looking aspect of many Governments, I think the geographic reach of making will be a growth area. Automatic translation is making it much easier for different Nationalities to collaborate. I’ve already seen growth from India and I am expecting further growth from Asia, Africa and South America over the next few years. Technical challenges currently limit getting content around the globe but there will likely be innovation in hosting to dynamically fire up mirror sites as demand changes.

In summary:

• Fundamental reasons for blogging will stay the same
• Content dynamically provided
• Richness and interactivity of content
• Geographic growth

I’ve written this as part of Innovation Company’s study on what bloggers see as the future of blogging – http://innovationcompany.co.uk

By Andy from Workshopshed 2 Comments

  Posted in: Inspiration