Reading through the news coverage and transcript of Bill Gates' ode to blogging, I cannot help but feel that the blogosphere changed today. It feels very much like 1995 all over again.
Gates' remarks were reminiscent of the infamous Pearl Harbor Day email he sent to his troops nearly a decade ago, in which he "declared war" on the then nascent World Wide Web. At that time, few of us were on the Web. It was still the realm of techies, much like Weblogs and RSS today.
At that time, Netscape's share of the browser market was close to 90%. Of course, we all know what happened next. By early 2000, Netscape's share plunged to 20%, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser won the browser wars. What is on my mind right now is, with this speech today did Bill Gates set the table to make history repeat itself?
What is known for sure is today's speech will cause a ripple effect. CEOs who maybe didn't know RSS from CES tomorrow will quickly huddle their CIOs and PR chiefs to explore this "blogging thing Bill Gates talked about." Bottom-up business communication will only gain steam from here. This is a good thing, but it's only half the story.
The potential murkier side of the story is that underneath the softer bloggier side that Bill Gates showed today was a veiled declaration of war on Six Apart, Userland, Google and anyone else who makes blogging and wiki publishing tools. Did Bill Gates throw a pebble in the blogosphere pond today? Time will tell. It will be interesting to hear others' perspectives in the blogosphere on the day's events.
