Prediction: Blogs Will Become a Powerful Economic Engine

Posted on November 5, 2005

Several blogs are running a quote from Michael S. Malone's Silicon Insider article that slams the recent blog bashing article by Forbes and says that Forbes is wrong about new technologies. Malone, who used to run Forbes ASAP, calls Forbes the "Anti-Indicator." Here is Malone's bullish blogging statement that many blogs are quoting:

Let me make a prediction. Five years from now, the blogosphere will have developed into a powerful economic engine that has all but driven newspapers into oblivion, has morphed (thanks to cell phone cameras) into a video medium that challenges television news, and has created a whole new group of major companies and media superstars. Billions of dollars will be made by those prescient enough to either get on board or invest in these companies. At this point, the industry will then undergo its first shakeout, with the loss of perhaps several million blogs -- though the overall industry will continue to grow at a steady pace.
And, at about that moment, Forbes will announce that the blogosphere is the Next Big Thing for investors.

Hopefully Malone's is right and we won't all end up working for Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

For those who missed it, the highly criticized Forbes article, called "Attack of the Blogs" focused solely on negative aspects of blogging and how blogs can be used to spread false information without mentioning any positive aspects of blogging. Here's a sample:

Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It's not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can't even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of other victims -- even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat.
"Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality," says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. "The potential for brand damage is really high,"says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft's main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. "There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it's juicy."