A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Wordpress 2.6 is more than a blog and is quickly evolving into a full-fledged Web content management system. While they're a little late, some of my competitors (CMS Watch) also recently noted the trend of blogging applications such as Wordpress taking on more CMS-like duties.
I wish I would have expanded on my own thoughts about blogging tools continuing to add more CMS functions into their software. However, I'm not so sure I could have written it better than Irina Guseva's post at CMS Wire. She takes the story even further by asking whether the trend from blog to CMS is a good thing or not.
It’s not impossible to turn a blogging tool into a proper CMS, but is this really the point? We would argue that there’s a need for a middle ground between content and enterprise focused Web CMS products and rapid fire, publishing focused blogging tools, and that the blog tool vendors should careful define and shoot for this.
Irina's point is valid. There are reasons why users of blogs have chosen to use blog-only applications over a CMS. Generally, blogging applications have better usability and are simpler to maintain than a multi-functional Web CMS. If blogging software are developed to become a big CMS, those developers may lose the very customer base that made their software popular in the first place.