How will blogs be used in the future?

With still more follow-up to my original post, here’s another pithy answer to one of Bob Cargill's perplexing questions for us to answer for direct marketers at the NEDMA event.

How do you think blogs will be used in the future?

I think many companies will empower their employees to blog on the company’s behalf according to a set of loose guidelines. Blogs will be connected by blog aggregation system that is a way to feature the most active blogs and also connect the audience to the most relevant conversations. Blogs will also be incorporated as tools for

• employee evaluation- who has the best ideas and audience, who's slacking
• product development - what are customers saying about what's in the pipe
• customer services - respond to questions and let customers support other customers
• market research - hmm pay a research firm or do it ourselves
• company communications - default
• marketing - speak with your potential customers
• pr - cultivate your relations and just be open
• seo - do all of the above and you won't have to worrry about search engine rankings

Also see the Macromedia Blogging Case Study in the Backbone Corporate Blogging Survey