Om has a post today about needs of next generation of blogging services. He wants these services to evolve from publishing platforms to social services.
Om has it right when he says:
We have two choices in order to consolidate these — either opt for all-purpose services such as Facebook (as tens of millions have done) or use our blogs as the aggregation point or hub for all these various services. Facebook, for instance allows you to share photos, aggregate your digital droppings, share comments with friends and exchange messages, but it doesn’t give you a unique identity on the web. In contrast, blogs with social features could allow you to do exactly that.
I want my own unique identity online. I don’t want to be defined by Facebook.
Blogs will become social and evolve from a personal newspaper of sorts to a new thing all together. It’s a new category and that’s why we invested in Tumblr last year. In my (wildly biased opinion) Tumblr is the easiest to use.
And it’s the only one with the built in social features that I want like reblogging, dashboard, notes, friend following).