I came across a great video post by Darren Rowse from ProBlogger the other day that I thought I would share about new trends in blogging. As blogging continues to evolve and become integrated in business practices, it is also spawning a whole new area of opportunities for those who are creative in leveraging their online properties into indirect forms of incomes.

Darren’s Five Trends

• Multiple Author Blogs
• Multi-Topic Blogs
• Blogs Converging with Other Types of Sites
• Portal-Like Design
• Indirect Monetization

I am particularly interested in the blog convergence with other sites. In the video, Darren mentions twitter and friend feed and other ad ons. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. With Google’s recent announcement of the friend connect program, we’re only going to see cooler applications and more sophisticated communities that will evolve around a particular blog.

Some trends I’m seeing in blogging:

1. Integration of multimedia. As more and more bloggers use video and audio to communicate with their audience, flash players and methods of sharing videos are becoming sleeker and easily customizable. From the simplicity of choosing a Youtube player that matches your site’s colors, I see a lot of opportunities for companies who are going to make it easier (and sexier) for bloggers to share content- whatever the medium.
2. Wider Cross-Platform Implementation. I’m also seeing blogs that are being pushed out through various sites. There are more options for various social networking sites and video sharing sites allowing users to grab their own RSS code and push their content: blog once, post twenty times. I think this feature will be essential in the next few years. We already see it with Facebook notes and the applications like Flogger, as well as blip.tv, and even Youtube.