Blogs: The Killer App?

Are blogs the killer app we've been waiting for? The app through which the potential of the internet as a communication medium makes a quantum leap? All the hoopla directed at blogs lately (quick round-up here, quantified here with more here) suggests a killer app blogs may be.

To be clear, the blog per-se isn't the killer app. Rather it is the software--Blogger, Bloglines, movable Type, Gray Matter--that make blogging relatively simple that is the true engine. The ease of creating and maintaining a blog has increased dramatically. Opportunity for further simplification is still rampant, to be sure. One still needs to have rudimentary HTML knowledge, for example, to manage a blog. As blogging and feed aggregating software approach the ease of use that characterize MS Word or a typical web browser, blogs will be well poised to achieve saturation.