Om & Scoble Departures Part of New Trend?

As many of you have probably already heard, Microsoft's former blogstar Robert Scoble has left the building. According to this article from CNET:

Scoble, 41, said in a phone interview that he will join PodTech.net, a Menlo Park, Calif., start-up that earlier this year began podcasting video interviews recorded with technology industry luminaries.

Apparently Scoble is not the only one joining the exodus from Corporate America. Om Malik, one of the most popular bloggers on the net, is calling it quits with Business 2.0 and has taken seed funding for a new venture.

He will still be involved with the publication as a contributing editor, but will now be focusing his time on building a business leveraging his massively popular GigaOm property. According to Technorati, Om's blog is the 85th most popular blog on the planet. Not bad, eh?

As independent publishers gain further notoriety it will be interesting to see how the webscape continues to shift as a result. Are Om and Scoble part of a new trend in media? God only knows that certain folks have already started capitalizing upon the success of their blog. Welcome to Web 2.0.

technorati tags: om, scoble, blogger, web 2.0