Will blogs change development?

Yesterday at work my colleague Anne and I were getting very excited about blogs - not for the first time, I should admit. Anne was showing me her blog on 'Culture and Development'. I then revisted the ODI blog which is just great and where I first got really enthusiastic about the potential of blogs for development organizations - rather than just as a really fun way to exchange knowledge as an individual. There I found a post by Enrique Mendizabal on blog development from 19 January 2006. This post talks about how ODI has discovered the value of blogs:

Only a few months ago ODI began asking itself what a blog is. Today, we
recogise it is, at least, a useful communication tool and it enjoys significant
support. At its best, blogs can filter information from previously inaccessible
sources; can convene different groups around a single issue, providing a
menu of options and links to further resources that conventional media finds it
difficult to deal with...

Enrique considers that the value of these social technologies lies in their capacity to bridge the IT gap between resource rich civil society organizations and those in developing countries, limited in their action by a systematic lack of resources. He also argues that blogs can be used with Dgroups, for example, as well as other social technologies... Finally, he writes of the way that blogs will change development thinking and intellectual property. He argues:

If blogs will change the way we think about development, then what is there to stop them changing the way development is carried out?