Blogs for Professional Advantage

John Battelle's collumn at Business2.0 suggests that blogs will become a staple of business (reg. req.):

So here's my prediction: Blogs will soon become a staple in the information diet of every serious businessperson, not because it's cool to read them, but because those who don't read them will fail. In short, blogs offer an accelerated and efficient approach to acquiring and understanding the kind of information all of us need to make business decisions...

Until recently, blogs have proven to be an incredibly lousy source of information for most businesspeople. Finding and keeping up with the relevant ones is far too time-consuming. But I've recently started using a newsreader, and after spending hours setting the damn thing up, my business life has changed forever.

He is right for two reasons: first exposure to blogs is as a reader and like all great disruptive technologies they provide competitive advantage to individual early adopters.

Same dynamics drive team leaders to bring blogs and wikis inside to create advantage for workgroups. Some team members initially participate as readers, but gradually shift to being contributors and collaborators.

[via Stowe]