If Technorati was having a difficult time tracking the blogosphere before, things might have become a lot more challenging in the wake of a Business 2.0 story about how blogs have emerged as - gasp - money-making operations. It highlights blogs such as TechCrunch, which is apparently, pulling in $60K a month in advertising, while Boing Boing and PaidContent have ad revenue of more than $1-million a year. I can't help but think that this whole blogging thing could become a little like the Gold Rush where everyone moves to California to start prospecting for riches. Of course, the only people who really made any money from the gold rush were suppliers like Levi Strauss so perhaps this is good news for folks like TypePad, Google, Wordpress and FeedBurner. In terms of blogging for dollars, there are people and networks who will do well given some portion of online ad dollars tsunami will find its way to blogs (some of it through AdSense; some of its sponsorships or banners). For people such as Om Malik and Michael Arrington who are fortunate enough to get enough of a following to attract advertisers, the world is their oyster. I mean, imagine a relatively low-cost business where you hammer out short items featuring ideas/thoughts/news, and have advertisers knocking on your door. For the rest of us, however, blogging will pay for a cup of coffee a day if the AdSense Gods are being kind to us. Then again, how many people realistically believe they're going to get rich blogging? For most of us, it's about non-financial goals such as the freedom to write or brand building. The Business 2.0 story is positive because it will help legitimize blogs as an advertising vehicle rather than being seen as places where teenagers pour out their feelings or frustrated writers rant about their lot. Maybe this will see a trickle down effect for many of us (myself included) producing quality content but getting little or no attention from advertisers. For more thoughts, check out Mathew Ingram, Om Malik and Valley Wag.

Having written a lot about YouTube recently, I stayed out of the fray yesterday when the video-sharing company unveiled new two advertising programs yesterday (with a little help from the notorious Paris Hilton). It got me thinking that while YouTube - and anything video, for that matter - is hot, what other Web 2.0 have as much buzz these days? More important, what are the hottest Web 2.0 businesses these days in terms of companies making revenue and profits? As Dead 2.0 made clear a few weeks ago, Web 2.0 is a lot like hot school. One day, you're red hot and you've got more friends than you'd ever imagine; the next all these people have moved on to the next new kid in town. If you've got suggestions and/or thoughts about whose hot and who's red hot, feel free to pass them along. Update: I guess Grouper is "hot" given it has been acquired by Sony Pictures for $65-million.

I'm camping this week at Sandbanks Provincial Park. Even though our site has no electricity, it's not exactly camping but more like outdoor living given there's pretty good cell coverage and two towns/civilization (Picton and Bloomfield) only 13 kilometers away. A personal highlight of the week-long "adventure" (my wife is an enthusiastic camper; I'm a cottager) is visiting the Mustang Drive-In on the outskirts of Bloomfield. It's a real throw-back to the 1950s  - family run, a traditional snack bar, an old bus that serves as a ticket office, and a movie projector with big film reels. I'm not sure why I find it so compelling - perhaps it's the novelty of a drive-in or maybe a refreshing change of pace from "normal" life. Another part of my temporary Luddite-like lifestyle is my wife's insistence on taking photos with 35mm film rather than a digital camera. She claims non-digital photos are sharper but this may have to do with the fact my Olympus digital camera is a few years ago. In contrast to the Mustang and our powerless camp site is another part of Sandbanks devoted to people with RVs. We took a bike ride through the site yesterday, and it seems pretty strange to see people setting up their satellite-TVs dishes. Of course, I'm blogging so perhaps the kettle shouldn't call the teapot black?!