The Blog is Dead, Except on LinkedIn?

Bucking the latest wave of "the blog is dead" thought posts, LinkedIn is extending the ability to write long-form texts to all users. Originally, this ability was limited to selected "thought leaders" picked by some arcane internal formula. Now anyone will be able to do it. I don't think this is hugely significant, but it is interesting that LinkedIn is taking this move, because it has lots of data on what its users like and want to read. Clearly users are reading those thought leader posts as well as external blog posts that users can already link, and the company wants to keep capturing that Web traffic.