Once all the hype has settled, what will blogs be used for? That is a question I get quite often from journalists and a questions I often ponder myself.

The new service, that Kilroy travels in Denmark offers, might be indicative of one stable future use of blogs: travel blogs. Kilroy (a travel company mainly offering cheap travels for youth and students) now offers their users a free blog in which to record their travel experiences: Rejseblog, rejseberetninger og rejsebilleder. (update: utah points out in the comments that Kilroy is using a general blog system called Tra vel log, which comes in various branded formats).

A travelblog falls into the category of what I think of as an eventblog: a blog that runs for a limited and clearly definable period of time: such as a travel blog; a conference blog, a competition or festival blog. An event blog (at least when written by just one person) typically offer its readers a clearcut narrative with a identifiable beginning and ending and quite often a narrative peak ("I reached the top of Mount Everest", "the winners are...", "the concert was as great as expected" etc). The writer arrives at the festival/begins his journey - the writer participates in the event - the event finishes/the writer returns home. Readers can then use comments to "say hello" to the blogger, give advice or to ask the writer to explore or do certain things.

Other future uses of blogs (that I will follow up on later): political/agenda setting blogs, "project blogs" (research projects, diet projects, election campaigns etc), "shared interest/shared lives" blogs ("knitting blogs" f.i.), "blogs as integrated part of a frontpage" (corporate blogs); "blogs as part of the PR machine", "speaker's corner" blogs.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:39