This should be great. The panel is Meg Hourihan, Dave Winer and Nick Denton. (In fact, it was really good. But because it was conversational, the following account is fragmentary.)

Dave is blogging the panel as he’s on it. Call it Escherblogging.

Dave says he did XML-RPC and Soap to enable people to write to the Web as easily as they write with their word processor. Weblogs and Web services are all about the human needs they serve. (Write on, Dave!)

Nick sees weblogs as a way to produce media more cheaply. “Weblogs are one way to produce media properties that distribute the editorial processs…”

Meg cares about weblogs because it enables people to connect.

Meg defines a blog as something that’s updated daily, presented in reverse chronological order, time-stamped, etc. But wouldn’t that make the AP headlines page a blog? I ask if blogging is not just a technology but also a tone of voice — a new type of rhetoric, one that’s distributed over the Web.

Meg on whether rightwing yahoos are going to take over weblogging: “It’s not like talk radio. There’s unlimited bandwidth. Anyone can have a weblog.”

What percentage of people online will have a weblog? Dave: Everyone.

Nick: Ten times as many people writing in public than in the world of print. And that’s a big deal.

Dave: In 10 years, every member of Congress will have a weblog.

Mitch Ratcliffe: There’s no point in arguing in what is or is not called a weblog. What matters is that more and more people are communicating in their own voice.

Cory:”Blogging allows people to write who couldn’t write before… It’s not the usual suspects.” What makes it easier is the informality of blogs as well as the ese of use of the technology. For example, EFF set up a blog so they could get past the barrier of having to have every pronouncement be official and thus have to go through all the official poicies and controls.

Final question: What do you want from blogs in the next few years?

Meg: Push. She wants to have the content come to her.

Dave: What does the audience want? Doc: Search. Me: Blogthreads. Marc Cantor: We’re doing a “topic server” that will enable blog threads.

Nick: Go to one page and see the buzziest items of the hour, recommended by my social network.

Categories: Uncategorized dw