Almost a year and a half ago I wrote about the weblog content cycle, trying to better understand how users consume and produce weblog content. It remains a cornerstone in my assertion that desktop weblog tools need to both read and write, that the primary function of weblogging is creating new weblog content, not managing feeds. Here's a variation of the graph, which I did 14 months ago and never got around to publishing:
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Pretty easy to see that the next major feature for desktop news readers will be Analysis: what am I really reading, what am I clicking on more often, what am I quoting more often, etc...
For weblog production, we're still just at the "Posts" stage. Interesting to see that Enclosures are finally gaining some traction, but in the Consume column! I know that Adam Curry has been chomping at this for a long time. Threads could be interesting both for the Consume side as well as the Produce side. Now we'll need features that integrate/replace iMovie, which post multimedia effortlessly to blogs.
As for distribution, BlogLines is probably the best example of Reflection. Security (along with Identity) is probably the most important concern... how do I know you really wrote this? Could blogs be a killer app for getting digital signatures into mainstream use?