WHAT'S A BLOG? I recently told a friend to check out my blog, this Blind Camel thing you're reading right now.

"What's a blog?" asked my friend.

A day later over lunch another friend described his fledgling company's new product, an innovative product for adding relevant advertising (among other things) to RSS- or Atom-enabled (syndicated) blogs.

Two different days, two different friends, two different levels of blog awareness.

Trouble is, sometimes I forget that the mass of folks have more in common with my first friend than my second. If you're reading this blog right now, you're part of a relatively small (albeit growing) group. And if you understood that stuff about syndication, you're breathing still more rareified air.

One recent study reported that 11 percent of Internet users visit blogs written by others, and between two and seven percent of adult Internet users in the U.S. write their own blog. (And of that group, only 10 percent actually update their blog on a daily basis.)

I wonder if that's more or less people than are still buying and reading literary fiction? Poetry?

I betcha more people read blogs than read poetry.

What am I on about today?

Well, I'm in wondering mode. Wondering about how big this blogging phenomenon will get. Wondering about if the metastory about blogging should be more about 'vehicle' than content.

Right now, I'd bet most of us who "blog" and read blogs think of blogging as something largely personal, confessional, homespun, and cute. But what if a blog -- that is, a template-driven, actively updated content experience that typically arises from a singular POV or reason-for being (even if it's created by more than one person) -- is really an early incarnation of next-generation narrowcasting, a sort of Christopher Columbus for exploring how content creators can match up with their audiences and create real and ongoing customer relationships (to use a hackneyed business phrase). In other words, if I'm a big fan of Bob Mould, then maybe I'll want to subscribe to his blog, which will be the central point of distribution for his writing, his music, his merchandise, and the scheduling of his live performances. In other words, Bob's blog (or Andrew Sullivan's or even BlogCritics) will be the nexus at which you can enter into various value exchanges with one another, minus the mediation of a record label, a publisher, etc. Am I making sense? (Perhaps I'm stretching with the BlogCritics cite. When RSS enables you to be your own aggregator, who needs another layer of middleman?)

Our first collective attempt at creating the next generation of online content was corporate and money-driven and, as such, it missed the power of the medium. Blogging is the tip of the personal and creative next wave, a lurking iceberg that is arising from our passions and our needs.

"What's a blog?" Good question, I say.