The pinstripes are here, goes the refrain in some parts of blogdom, and so it's time to exit. The sentiment has been created by the realisation, in recent times, and among people who call the shots in mainstream media (think Rupert Murdoch, the editors of BusinessWeek magazine who have launched their own hey-we've-online-spoor-too blog, that venerable newspaper, The Economist) that blogs have a role, a critical one, to play in the future of the business. They do. Only, the way bloggers see the world, there's no place in the future for mass-media vehicles.

Some qualification is called for here. Mainstream media vehicles, tabloids, right-of-centre television channels that cater to rednecks in every part of the world irrespective of the real colour of their necks, brain-numbing soaps catering to a generation of individuals that has exchanged its grey matter for jelly (if it is coloured a shade of neon and branded, all the better), and get-with-it publications that make a living by describing (take your pick, two of five), sex, interiors of houses, nappy changing rituals, summer salads and exotic travel destinations, and using abbreviations such as (take your pick, one of three), bod, fab and spesh, will continue to exist and thrive. However, it is unlikely that they will still be able to play the role they take the greatest pride in, shaping public opinion. The blogs will be doing that. Welcome back, dear friends, to the second micropublishing revolution.

The first, of course, featured publications such as Slate, The Drudge Report and Salon. Blogs, however, at least the good ones that manage to find a following, will not be owned by corporations or not-for-profits (their brand of earnestness is often far worse than the callousness of Big Business). They will be specialised, allow users to post comments on what they think of the latest entry (like they already do), and their popularity will wax and wane depending on exactly how useful or pertinent they are. This isn't just micropublishing; it is micropublishing on steroids.

Is there money to be made from blogs? Of course there is, which is why the pinstripes are suddenly interested in them. Carrying ads is one way blogs can make money; instituting a subscription charge is another, and becoming an affiliate (most tamely, for Amazon, for instance), is a third. Over the next few months and years, intrepid bloggers will surely find other ways to make money, without losing sight of the original purpose of the blog. Those that do will fall by the wayside, another victim of the Sitemeter curse.

One theory doing the rounds of blogdom is that with the medium at least three years old, and the mainstream guys beginning to show interest in it, this is perhaps the beginning of the end for blogs. That's a fallacious argument. For all this time, the majority of bloggers have flogged pet issues, ranted and raved (some make Michael Moore look like a tongue-tied freshman) about everything that is wrong with the world in their opinion, and nurtured that ego-thing. Now, most first-generation bloggers have moved on, to balanced points of view, to blogs that are surprisingly bereft of grammatical and typographic errors, to in-depth reporting and analysis of the kind that one sometimes encounters in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly. There are, arguably, a few thousand blogs out there that are top-notch, and their numbers will only increase. This is the golden age of blogs. Imagine a thousand micro-publishers, imagine ten thousand, with no pet themes to propagate, no marketing departments to kowtow to, and nothing to sell (if they don't want to) apart from their knowledge, opinions and quirky turns of phrase. Imagine a better world.