Blogs: Here to stay - but evolving

Although making a living just blogging is nearly impossible, a blog can have a great deal of career value by demonstrating one's expertise and writing skills, thus serving as a "reputation builder," Blood says by phone from San Francisco. "You can quickly establish yourself as an expert in your field by becoming a kind of one-stop source for information."

And while existing software has made blogs cheap and easy, Blood predicts that the limitations of the form will drive bloggers into other forms of publishing.

"Once we have easy-to-use tools for other kinds of publications, like ezines [online magazines], or even tools that allow citizen journalists to contribute to their local papers, we'll see those kinds of publications explode as well," she says.