Maish: I guess the aspect of highlighting trends is built into the fabric of blogs. Let me explain. There is this wonderful article in Harvard Business Review titled "Building an Innovation Factory" by Andrew Hargadon and Rob Sutton (June-July 2000). This article describes the innovation process as analyzed in many industries:
1) Constantly Capture ideas
2) Keep these alive
3) Explore new uses for them
4) Build prototypes to test them out
These four steps highlight the implicit relationship between a blog and its authors/readers. From my experience, a blog captures ideas and keeps it alive (steps 1 & 2). But the blog also gives the authors/readers something back--a fertile ground to explore new uses and opportunities to build and experiment with prototypes.