Finding Out Why People Blog

The best part about blogging is anyone can do it! Young or old, male or female, it doesn’t matter. If you have a desire to get your voice heard online, whatever the reason, you can do it with a blog. You are your own boss when it comes to your blog.

There are many types of blogs as well. For example, some of the common types of blogs are:

What is a blog

Today’s blogs can have many different forms, but the following elements make up the traditional model of a blog:

✦ Posts: A blog is a Web site that consists of entries (called posts) that appear in reverse chronological order, so the most recent appears at the top of the page.

✦ A commenting feature: A blog includes a comment feature that allows readers to publish their own comments on the posts they read. Comments provide interactivity, discussions, and relationship-building opportunities between the blogger and his community of readers.

Welcome to the Blogosphere

Blogs have been around for over a decade, but they’ve come a long way since their inception. There was a time in the early days of the Internet when Web sites were fairly static destinations for information. As new ways evolved for people without extensive technical knowledge to develop their own Web presences, blogging was born.

The term blog is a fusion of the words Web and log and is sometimes still referred to as weblog. Originally, blogs were simple online diaries where people posted the daily events of their lives. Typically, people wrote blogs to keep friends and family connected. For example, a woman might update her online diary with information about her journey through pregnancy to share the events with her family and friends across long distances. Just as the telephone brought people closer than ever a century earlier, blogs brought people from around the world together at the end of the 20th century.

Joining the Blogosphere

The term blog has become part of common vernacular. What was once thought of as a fad has become an integral part of the social, media, and business worlds. It seems like everyone knows someone who writes or reads a blog. In fact, many people read blogs and don’t even realize it! Today, blogs can look just like traditional Web sites. In fact, some of the most popular online destinations are blogs, which shows just how far the fad has actually come.

According to the popular research report, The State of the Blogosphere 2008, published by Technorati.com (a popular blog search tool), there were over 184 million blogs by the end of 2008, and that number continues to grow each day. Why? It’s simple. There are virtually no barriers to entry. Just about anyone can create a blog, for free and with very little technical abilities, and have a place on the Web to publish anything he or she wants. (Of course, there are unwritten rules of the blogging community, called the blogosphere.

The inherent draw of blogging is the opportunity it provides for anyone with access to a computer and the Internet to publish content online. They can make that content available to a global audience or to a select few. The choices are made by each individual blogger. Again, when you start a blog, you become the leader of your own mini media outlet.

As you read, keep in mind that different people have different goals for their blogs, and for that reason no two blogs are alike. You find out more about why people blog later in this chapter. For now, just remember not to judge a blog by its cover. A blog is what the author makes of it, and that’s where this blog comes into action. There are few rights and wrongs to blogging, but you can’t begin to understand why that’s true until you dive in and join the blogosphere!