Everyone knows that the Internet is serious business. Many are starting to understand that blogging is now serious business as well. Professional bloggers have an average of 3.5 blogs each and work over 10 hours a week on blogging, something that most would equate with (gulp) work. The reality is that blogging is a business and as a result has its own economy. This graphic by Grasshopper Group depicts the economy surrounding blogging and breaks down the ins and outs of it as a profession. …

What started as an online diary for lonely people to express their thoughts to nobody in particular (or in some cases, nobody at all) has grown into one of the most powerful aspects of the Internet. For many, it’s where we get our news rather than from mainstream media. For others, it’s become a full-time job that pays the bills through advertising and sponsorships. Some blogs are worth millions. This graphic by Flowtown illustrates a time line of where we’ve been and where we are now. Have bloggers evolved to their ultimate state as alternative journalists, public relations portals for businesses,…

Jeff Bullas had a post up on his blog, Is Twitter About to Terminate Google Buzz, that discussed how Google Buzz is essentially dead. However, I don’t think Twitter killed Google Buzz. I think Google Buzz killed Google Buzz. I had high hopes for it. I really did. I didn’t see it as a Twitter killer or substitution for Twitter, but rather a more social version of the Google Reader Share with Note feature. I thought it might be a nice way to write a few lines about a blog post or news item you stumbled across. And with more blogs disabling comments, I thought it had potential to usher in a new era of blog commenting….

The blog — once full of affinity, originality, and creativity — is now filled to the brim with animosity, mediocrity, and futility. So what happened? What has become of the blogosphere that I once knew and thoroughly enjoyed? Going back a few years ago, it was not uncommon for yours truly to read hundreds of different blogs in a single day. It was amazing to have the opportunity to read a myriad of unique perspectives that I never had been exposed to before. Everyone had something to say, and everything they said was interesting. As such, clicking that “subscribe” button was incredibly addictive…

Every once in a while, the tech world undergoes something like a defining moment. The Apple-Gizmodo saga was one of those. It has been chatted about so much online that to try and recap the entire kerfuffle would be pointless. Yet, at the same time, less attention has been paid to that always-difficult question of ‘what it all means’. After all, what happened was that the mentality one of the biggest tech blogs around ran smack into the mindset of one of the biggest tech companies. On Gizmodo’s side were the ideals of journalism; on Apple’s the notions of law and order and corporate secrecy. For weeks…

The big story continues to be Gizmodo’s iPhone 4 revelations, and a police raid in which editor, Jason Chen’s computers were seized and his house searched. At issue here could be the rights of journalists to report the story they have in their hands, as corporate America continues its attempt to define bloggers as not being journalists, while offering recognition as journalists only to those writers who are connected to big name corporate media brands. California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team seized four computers and two servers from the editor’s house. They did so using a…