Over at Economist.com there's a number of articles on blogging, from the current hard copy issue, including
It's the links, stupid:
"Blogging is just another word for having conversations"
In this article Dave Winer talks about the essence of blogging:
Blogging is also about style. Dave Winer, a software engineer who pioneered several blogging technologies, and who keeps what by his own estimate is the longest-running blog of all (dating back to 1997), has argued that the essence of blogginess is “the unedited voice of a single person”, preferably an amateur.
I'd like to find a blogger like that who works over at Comcast. I've got a conversation I'd like to have with them.