INNOBLOG

Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal celebrated "10 years since the blog was born by inviting twelve commentators (a spread of folks including politician Newt Gingrich, actress Mia Farrow, and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox) to write about what blogs mean to them.

They didnt ask me. And Ill spare the personal perspective. But blogs are worth writing about here because they fit so many of the classic patterns of disruption:

Blogs provide better performance along some dimensions (customizability, timeliness of information, focus) while sacrificing performance along others (accuracy).

Early on, blog creation required a significant amount of technical know-how, meaning that blogs took hold first with a small number of users who had the knowledge to use them the internets tech savvy. But the base of those creating and reading blogs, and the number of topics blogs cover, has expanded as the technology has become more accessible. Blogs are gaining popularity in all spheres where traditional print media plays, including sports, politics and entertainment.

Blogs also go where traditional media cant into the realm of social networking, allowing friends, families, and others to share their lives through print, pictures and (increasingly) video, online.

Many in the traditional media dismiss blogs, focusing on their deficiencies. This is a classic error right out of the Innovators Dilemma. Of course, their criticisms have some merit, many blogs offer low-quality content, poor writing, and inaccurate reports that circulate rumors. But many disruptions start out this way, and then improve until they are "good enough for the mass consumer.

Blogs are already moving upmarket and improving. The term "Professional Blogger is no longer an oxymoron. Some in the traditional media realize this ESPN, for example, recently purchased the popular basketball blog TrueHoop.com to complement its other online news offerings.

And I think that blogs still have a lot of disruption left in them. Many Americans still dont know what a blog is, and most dont read them even fewer create and maintain them. But the numbers, as shown (appropriately) on this blog, show that growth is strong. (There are many neat graphs tracking the blogosphere there, I suggest you take a look).

As a final irony blogs here, here and here point out that the Wall Street Journal didnt get its facts quite right, blogs are more than a decade old.