I recently came across the diagram below, which attempted to explain how feeds, blogs and various other parts of the content syndication process were interrelated. While this diagram was created to reflect the blog, feed and syndication situation in 2005, has that much really changed since then? Interestingly, knowledge of what blogs and wikis are has increased substantially in the past few years. Among business and corporate types, it would appear that 96% now know what a blog is — and 59% have downloaded a newsreader.

But in the same breath, we should also note that only 42% are actually reading blogs via a newsreader — and these are the very same people who are inclined to answer a survey about feeds, blogs and wikis (and not a random sample of your average corporate users).

The number one concern among those corporate folks who haven’t started a blog? Time. 59% were worried that creating a blog would be too time consuming and 57% were worried about what to write about (one could argue that these are also probably the biggest reasons for the average person not starting a blog either). So what does this all boil down to in the end? Money, of course.

For anyone looking to create a blog (whether that’s a CEO or just the average web user), that person is looking for some return on the investment of time and energy they are going to devote to a blog. Calculating that return is not always easy to do.

While it’s certainly not all about the numbers, who doesn’t want to see some kind of return on their time? While the syndication of content is certainly not going anywhere, the relationship between blogging and feeds might. While 85% of people may say that blogging is not a fad, 67% also say that blogging will become a must-have marketing and communications tool.

The future of blogging in a business setting seems very uncertain — even if you’re able to track your blog very carefully in terms of metrics, how do you determine how much more approachable people felt your brand was after reading your blog?