Are blogs dead?

A few days ago we learnt, through an article in Wired, that what’s hot now is microblogging, flickr and facebook. Blogs are dead. Wired about blogging:

“…why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.”

I don’t agree. The number of blogs is rising, which, admittedly, could support the argument in Wired. But, another observation is that more and more of our feeds from different services are gathered in one single spot – a blog. The flickr-feed, the twitter-/jaiku-feed, videos from youtube etc. are all integrated in the blog or the sidebars on the blog. I believe neither blogging nor blogs are dead. It rather seems the blog is the platform where messages from different channels are posted. It becomes more and more of a kind of social (press) room, where visitors can access all material in one place. And the different services function as satellites of content on their respective sites, suited for different audiences, depending on their personal taste or preferences.

So, blogs are still playing an important role, in connection with newer services, like twitter/jaiku and bambuser/qik and not as new ones, like flickr and youtube