It could be qualitatively different for critical events though, like protests, etc...

I think there certainly could be an event or two that moblogging plays an important role in, but in the end those events will be the exceptions that prove.

The key flaw with the moblog concept is in the medium. Not the medium of mobile posting, but the medium of the weblog. Weblogs are not instant the way TV is. If I post to a weblog I can't expect most of the audience to view it for a day or two. Sure a random head or two will see it soon after I post, but for the most part few people will. Now if Dave Winer gets caught in a riot that the TV misses and posts photos to his blog then that will become news as he has a critical mass of readers. But following the power law distribution of weblogs, very few people have the audience necessary to create news like that.

Bottom line it'd be a lot easier to just call up a TV station, rather then moblog. Or to shoot photos / video, edit them and post later. The instantaneous aspect of moblog is useless without the audience. And almost no bloggers have that audience. Most blog memes circulate on a time scale measured in days. If a meme hits a few key points like Instapundit then that scale might accelerate to hours. Generally the fact that someone is posting instantly is pretty insignificant.

On 9-11 I was woken up to the news of disaster. First impulse was to go online. Didn't take long to realize that the TV was pumping much better info. Stayed that way for about a day. Then the internet info took over. For real time news broadcast is an infinitely better medium. The internets strengths, rich filtered information, take time to develop.

Take a look at Joi Ito's "moblog" [ http://joi.ito.com/moblog/ ]. Is there anything on it that makes it better then any other photo blog? Maybe if you hit his site at precisely the time of posting you can catch a cool feeling of connectedness. Sort of like what webcam fans must get... But basically its a photoblog. And it might even be better if the photos were edited, color corrected, etc, but that's not for me to judge.

Moblog? I'll believe it when I see it. Until then its another buzzword headed for the trash bin my friends.

Why does anything new have to change the world? Maybe it will be fun and addictive for some, and that's it. If anything, it will just be a richer extension of the blog.

Check this out - this is the best moblogger that I've seen so far.

site: http://www.eachday.net
sample account: http://www.eachday.net/memories/demo

It's basically just a better way to share memories on the web, no more, no less. On their site, they don't even use cool speak like "moblog" etc. They are getting the message out to dummies, while the UI of the product is the slickest thing I have seen. That's the way it oughta be.