answers

Question 1

We have all in our time either used napster or heard of napster. It was the start of the music download through the internet.

It became so popular that a lot of the big companies thought that they would go bust because nobody would buy music no more. Also it gave a platform for less known artists to share their music with the masses without having to get a producer who would want them to change their music to the taste of the main boss.

So according to the Andrew Gullivan Blogging is heading the same way. The need for publishers will disappear and people will not have to worry that their original article will be watered down to the taste of the editorial board and the powers up above.


Question 2
Every person has his or her views on anything to everything. May it be the latest news headline on the TV or the paper, may it be the political situation, may it be on a company’s policies, or just life; Everyone has that view. Up till now there was very little one could do to voice those views.
Blogging has empowered the individual to voice his opinions with ease and to the whole world (it's another thing that nobody might be interested). It has given the individual to discuss his views with a broader audience than the pub he used to go to. He can also now get feedback on his opinions. The greatest thing about it all is the anonymity.

For the information hungry reader, blogs have given him a whole ocean full of latest news and views, and now he has the power to tell the reader I he thinks his info is wrong which he never had previously.


Question3
Yes the Traditional publication model will still be relevant in the future.

• Blogs are always coming up with news Ideas but what traditional media has the power to do is to get the facts to make the story solid.

"This is Journalism and Weblogs working together at its best. Bloggers break the news and hash it out... and a Journalist adds a layer of reporting on it, bringing that news beyond the Blogosphere."

• There are too many people with blogs who haven't got the faintest idea of how to write and end up putting very boring things

Alongside the boom, however, there have recently been a few faint signs of backlash. As increasing hordes take on the task of trying to keep new sites looking nice, sounding original and free from banalities, more hordes just seem to fail.

Question 4

With the proliferation of blogs we are seeing a whole new group of people blogging about everything from politics to what they ate this morning. I am sure that most people aren't interested in what someone ate this morning, so users are faced with trying to find something creative to write to get people to subscribe and read their blogs daily. And the challenge for them is to maintain their blogs, and not be let down if nobody reads.

Also for the developer it is a constant challenge to innovate blogging to get the real knowledge of experts onto the blogging world as written in Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog by farhad manjoo:-

Winer added that the technology behind weblogging still needs to get significantly easier for the real talent to come online. "What I'm interested in is the doctors and professors and engineers and people who have a good education and a social area of expertise. We need to really reach those people, we have to go a couple of levels in terms of ease-of-use."

I think a challenge many developers are facing is to make blogging available on all types of devices, from mobile phones, to pda's, blackberry's. They should look into how people can blog by text messaging, or how people can turn their mobile phones into live camera feeds.

The greatest challenge of all according to me is the challenge of authenticity. With blogging all sorts of people have access to be able to tell the world something. Blogging behaves just like Chinese whispers and before you know it the EU will have a new flag.

Over 60 blogs linked to the story about the new EU flag, most of them bemoaning the "hideous" and "truly ugly new flag". But what most people don't know is that the flag was just a concept design not officially commissioned by the EU.b
(Blogosphere: the emerging Media Ecosystem by John Hiler)