What's going on in the Blogosphere? Valleywag goes on to ask the question - "Why do you think the number of active bloggers is flat?" Is it really that simple? Is it even the right question?

All they show is a single chart and reference the number of active blogs tracked by Technorati. Wether that number expands or contracts doesn't really matter as its not really representative of the larger social media picture. Its only a single metric and BTW, 15 million bloggers is a lot of bloggers!

Like all new tools, blogs may have peaked with the early adopters. What may emerge are new tools that cross over to the general market. And in the meantime, there's still a lot of blogging upside potential inside of companies. Technorati doesn't pick up what goes on behind your corporate firewall. I know at SAP the interest in social media is very much on the rise and yes that includes blogs. In fact, I'd like to take this opportunity introduce you to another new SAP blogger; Amit Chatterjee. You can check out Amit's new blog here.

Blogs are only one of the many tools of social media and certainly not the ultimate objective. While the "blog" gets a lot of attention, I'm not in it for that, I'm in it for what the blog and the other tools of social media represent: The resurrection of the common conversation and the freedom of expression that comes with it.