Wednesday, July 23, 2003 12:46 PM
America Online is set to deliver its set of weblogging tools under the moniker "AOL Journals," with the release of AOL version 9 sometime this Summer. Of interest, AOL is apparently integrating many of its existing features into AOL Journals. For example, it will be possible to Instant Message new weblog entries. Also, the AOL picture service will allow users to post their pictures to their weblogs. Finally, audio blogging will be integrated such that updates (appearing as mp3 files) can be made via cell phone.
If AOL offering this set of weblogging tools is not an indication of a coming mass market acceptance, I am not sure what is. There remains a huge web user base which only interact with the world wide web via AOL. Indeed, away from the office, many of the attorneys I work with still utilize AOL as their portal to the web. With AOL promoting weblogs--and offering easy-to-use blog tools among its features, I expect many who have never heard of weblogs (and there are a lot of people) will get on board. And, in my humble opinion, getting more people on board can only aid the cause.