What To Watch For At Blog World Expo

Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra will deliver his annual State of the Blogosphere address tomorrow morning at Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas. The speech is essentially the blog search engine’s public opportunity to unveil results from a fairly far-reaching survey they conduct with bloggers each year. The stats are interesting and there’s always an insight or two that make the speech worth watching.

I’m keenly interested in this year’s speech, however, because I think the blogosphere is changing. While the evolution may be subtle, several key events and environmental factors are creeping into the mindset and habits of bloggers that make what we do a bit different. So watch for Jalichandra to talk about some of these topics and see what he says about them.

My guess is that Technorati will try to spin everything to make it sound like blogs are awesome and growing and a major media channel. If they don’t, they hurt their own future. Not that I think blogs are going away or that the industry is in a downturn, but these things are changing blogs, bloggers and the web in general:

• Twitter – You’d be hard pressed to find very many bloggers who wouldn’t agree that Twitter has changed their blog habits, frequency, topics and more. Two years ago blogs were about conversations. Twitter owns that territory now. How does that effect the reasons for blogging and the time bloggers spend on each.
• Lifestreaming – With trend watchers like Steve Rubel migrating to a more all-encompassing approach to blogging and nifty new tools like Posterous gaining market momentum, blogging may be moving back toward a more personal journal vibe for some. How does this apply to businesses (Rubel is tackling that topic today at Blog World) and is this a good or bad thing for the quality and quantity of blogs everywhere?
• FTC regulations – Bloggers don’t understand why the government is sticking their nose in their blogs. Many are mad. Some are scared. It doesn’t actually change much other than giving us all a subtle reminder that we ought not be bought without telling our audience we’ve been bought. Still, it does have some effects on the way bloggers make money from their efforts which has implications for bloggers, marketers, brands and more.

I would recommend watching Twitter from 8:45 a.m. PT/11:45 a.m. ET tomorrow (search for the hashtag #bwe09) to see what Jalichandra says. Frankly, I don’t know if he’ll touch on these issues. Technorati is in desperate need of a splash of positive blog energy. They just redesigned their interface and announced they were going to offer more of their own content. They’ve failed miserably to improve their tool over the past two years and have lost a bit of relevance in the blog world. According to Compete.com, nearest competitor Blog Catalog actually eclipsed Technorati in unique visitors last month for the first time.

But if Jalichandra does talk about these things, both from the survey’s results and Technorati’s perspective, it’s sure to be interesting.

Assuming he may read this post before tomorrow, jump in the comments and ask the questions you’d like him to answer about the State of the Blogosphere. Who knows? He may just do it.

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