A Blog about Blogging

Well this is going to be interesting, writing a blog about blogging and how blogs and blog posts have had such a dramatic and influential impact on the world in the ten years since its birth. That reminds me, many happy returns to whichever BlogSpot you subscribe too.

If you have kept up with the opening paragraph and haven’t yet blogged off, you should be OK to see this through to the end. I will try from now on not to mention the word... Blog! So first question I guess and the basic one that most would ask. What is a Blog? Oh bugger!

I must hasten to add the I am no academic on what a blog actually is or the full scientific and psychological explanation behind blogging. I only gave birth to my first one a mere two months ago. Of course I had heard of the term “to blog” about five years ago and knew it had something to do with computers as you needed the Internet to access one. In all seriousness I never really knew or understood what this technological tool could do for people or deliver for a community of readers.

Now this will sound very silly and possibly simplistic but when you create your blog for the very first time it’s like purchasing your very own space on the web (only no money changes hands) Once created it’s completely yours, no one else can touch it and you can decorate what lays behind the html with whatever topics of conversation you choose to create, whether related to a particular hobby, a work topic or football team.

Once up and running your mouth piece to the Internet has been created, you now have a voice that stretches not just across a single continent but the whole world and can be accessed by anyone. It is however up to you how loud you project your voice via this tool.

Trawl around the Internet and you find millions of blogs available to view. Some in full flow of conversation exchanging and expressing opinion, others have fallen silent after the first or second post never able to project a loud enough voice to be heard.

So, Blog created. Conversation engaged. Discussion in flow and opinions exchanged. Is this all there is to it?

For those that want to push the boundaries further then you can link your site to the wider Internet conversation, dig deeper and see how much is out there.

Like any interesting news story, Blogs are continuing to develop all the time. A great example is one that is likely to go down in technological history, the BBC’s Robert Peston’s Buisness Blog (Peston’s Picks). With the continuing and constantly developing economic turn down situation that Britain has found itself consumed by in recent months, Peston used his Blog to break news before appearing on the six, the ten and Newsnight to give updates on the situation. Like any breaking or developing news story, it won’t wait for the journalist to go live, you have to go live with the story first to ensure the news remains fresh.

The other example I am going to use before I Blog off is something I found this evening relating to the Mumbai attacks that have dominated the news over the last twenty four hours. It perfectly demonstrates how web tools like blogs and twitter help spread information into the public domain faster and can even provide help, comfort and warn of danger.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/154621/in_mumbai_bloggers_and_twitter_offer_help_to_relatives.html