I received by email a recent newsletter from Oracle Technology Network (OTN TechBlast) which had this announcement of an initiative to consoidate blogs about oracle in one place.

Dear OTN member:

It's clear to us at OTN (and across Oracle generally) that there's great value to the community in "nurturing" customer and employee blogs. For that reason, blogs.oracle.com has recently taken flight.

At this new site you'll find links to the best Oracle-related blogs we could find, whether authored by employees ... Even several Oracle executives are blogging now.

So companies are realizing that blogs are not going away, and it is more effective if things are made official for the community. Part of the reason blogs are not going away is how easy it has become nowadays to keep a blog diary. Yours truly went onto hosting and maintaining this new website after experiencing how easy it had become to write and manage content, using one of open source content management systems, Drupal in this case. And one can always find a free site to keep a blog on, if one does not have inclination to manage own domain and hosting.

The other trend is that it is technology companies and tech community that have taken the lead in blogging, compared to other industries. This could mainly be because of the IT customers and community are themselves online, and spend a considerable time on email, internet, search and so on. Being comfortable with the medium, the message flows easily... If this assessment is correct, we should see creative types from advertising, publishing industries taking more easily to videocasting than just text blogs. The other important thing would be how easily one can express one's thoughts without getting into conflict with, say an employer. But as a medium of expression it is here to stay.