Over the past year I have received my fair share of invitations to write for this and that blog. As a science blogger I have resisted any such invitations. As a tech and business blogger, I write for this blog, a duopoly that was definitely influenced by GigaOM. A few days ago, Fred Wilson wrote a post bemoaning the death of the individual blogger. The resulting furore, including Om’s response are all available on Techmeme and your favorite blog search engine.

Today I noticed something interesting, which is quite pertinent to that discussion, and speaks to the blurring line between blogs and online publications. ReadWriteWeb has a masthead, much like your favorite print publication might have.

To me that speaks to the evolution of not only blogging, but also media and publishing. A blog as online journal is now the realm of social networking sites, and perhaps that is the best place for such material to reside, e.g. I have a friends and family blog on vox where I post mundane stuff my mother might care about. Today when I hear the word “blog”, I automatically assume it to mean one of the following; opinion, news and analysis, marketing vehicle. These can be individual (Fred Wilson’s blog, Paul Kedrosky’s blog are good examples), or the kind of publications GigaOM, TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb have become. Is that a bad thing? I don’t necessarily think so. However, Fred’s nostalgia is completely understandable. Where will we be 4-5 years from now? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Publishing, Fred Wilson, Read Write Web