I find it interesting that Marc Canter is a big proponent of structured blogging, yet feels a need for a large media repository.

The idea that micoformats and microcontent will lead to a new world order, may be true, but his reference to Bob Wyman's post would also imply the death of his pet project: OurMedia.org

Bob says,

Sites like MeetUp, eBay, Monster, EVDB, and hundreds of others have business and usage models that work only because they exploit a small number of temporary limitations of today's most commonly used web publishing and searching tools. When those limitations are eliminated through deployment of Structured Blogging capabilities in millions of syndication feeds, by enhancing search engines to handle structured data, and by broad deployment of prospective search, the very foundation upon which these businesses are constructed will disappear. Their market window will have closed...

In other words I could make a post to my blog to sell my son's Baby Play Zone using some agreed upon structure for selling content. Search engines designed/optimized for hat structure would return my post within a search for Baby Play Zones in Vancouver. Cool. I like that.

But is eBay or Craigslist out of business? Hell no.

eBay is a search engine (within its domain) and as the dominant player in the industry an aggregator of content for sale (auction). eBay is also a repository of content (it hosts all the content). Structured content/blogging means that eBay won't have to foot the bill for hosting and managing this stuff. But you can rest assured eBay will still be interested in providing you with the best service for finding and buying merchandise it aggregates: its real business. Providing hosting of content is not its real business - it's a necessary cost. It will stop being a repository when that function is not needed.

Our Media on the otherhand is not an aggregator of content. It is a repository of content. Structured blogging, microcontent, et al. implies that there will be no need for a repository. So although I agree with Bob and Marc that we may be in the midst of a new world order, I think that those who can find meaning within the aggregation of content will be the leaders: in this sense eBay, Google, and Amazon may one day look so similar that it is difficult to tell them apart.