Blogging: The Best Places Online to Blog

Let's face it, the internet is full of the most novel and up to time sites. One popular tool that many people use are called blogs. What is a blog? A blog is the internet name for a "Web Log" or in basic terms, an online journal, diary.. whatever you want to call it. Some of these are private, some are only visible to a select few and some are open to the world to see. Now finding a decent blogging site can be a bit tricky, however here are three of the most popular blogging sites out there.

Myspace

Myspace is mult-functional and far more than just a 'blogging' site. It's a webpage for anyone who creates to send bulletins to their friends, share pictures to everyone and even leave comments to others if they feel inclined to do so. It funtions a lot like a blog, allowing a spot for where you live, which in most instances people lie about where they're from for security and it has favorites such as movies, television, books and actors. Filling in most of these are optional and there are numerous layouts out there that you simply paste into your 'about me' section that change font, colors and background easily for the user. Myspace also has the option of being private, meaning you can determine who sees everything on your page, down to even pictures. You can be public, allowing anybody with a myspace account to view or private, meaning you must be listed as a friend of said user in order to view anything on their space.

Myspace also allows music. You can have music videos, snippets from shows or just a standard song playing through a player - all of which are entirely optional.

Myspace blog allows the use of every tool to blog out there. You can bold, italicize, underline and hyperlink to pictures. There's also a time that the update happens, an edit and a delete option if you feel inclined to remove part or all of what you've just written. On your own personal page you can also see how many people have viewed your blog based on day, week, year and also how many kudos you received in the same time frames. However, it does not let you see who has viewed it. Although, one nifty option that myspace has is subscriptions. You can see who and when they subscribed to your blog, meaning every time you update - they get an email notification. Most other blogging tools out there lack this capability, giving it a new experience. Now you don't have to keep checking in, simply subscribe to your friends blogs and be notified of an update.

Open Diary

Open Diary has been around longer than most other blogging sites if I can recall correctly. Since its start up, Open Diary has gone through a lot of changes. For a while there was Free Open Diary and Open Diary - the latter was the pay to blog site that offered a few things that the free part of it didn't. Now there is just Open Diary, while they still offer a premium membership for a small fee, they've merged the two sites.

OD as it is commonly known as offers the ability to have 'favorites' which are friends. When viewing your favorites list the names of those who have updated since you last visited are bold and arranged by times of update. This goes from top to bottom. Simply clicking on an entry links you right to their page where you can read and leave either a private or a public comment for the user. You can edit your comments for the first 2 minutes from responding.

OD offers the blogger numerous tools to make blogging easier without having to learn html or anything more complicated. They also allow posting pictures, timers and anything else you can possibly imagine, including some things that can be rather annoying for others. OD also offers the ability to post your blog publically, favorites only or absolutely private - also you can download the diary right onto your own computer if you feel like it.
About the only downfall is when you go to reply to comments it links you to the other person's latest blog entry, meaning following any threads can be virtually impossible.

Live Journal

Perhaps the best one out there currently, Live Journal has five different journal types for users. Free(or Basic), Paid, Plus, Early Adopter and Permanent Accounts. Free and Plus accounts are both free of charge - except plus allows phone posts and extra user pictures compared to free. The only downside is that Plus Accounts have advertising, which if you can ignore them then it's well worth it.

Basic accounts allow an indefinite amount of posts per month, along with 6 user pictures. However, the only other benefit is you can use LJ talk (their instant messenger) to keep in contact with friends. Also, customizing the journal's look and feel is merely 'limited'.

Plus are also free, allowing 5 phone posts a month and up to 15 userpics. Unlike Basic, users on Paid have the ability to have polls. Just like the basic, however, the customization of the journal is only limited. Also, Plus accounts get 1GB of space in a scrapbook for storing pictures.

Paid accounts have numerous advantages. At first you start out with 30 userpics, but can pay to get up to 100. Not only this, you can also post via telephone 20 times in a month in comparison to the 5 available on Plus. Not only that, you get a customized e-mail address at live journal and have 2 GB of storage space on the scrapbook. Also, every option is fully unlocked for those who wish to pay the somewhat hefty cost a journal can have. You can customize your journal beyond any other account basically and even then some features are solely for use on paid accounts.
Permanent accounts are rarely offered for one price to the public. They are moreso for those who assist in the development of live journal along with staff and others who have helped out in testing things for a while.

Early Adopter accounts can not be aquired, unfortunately. These must be journals created before the middle of September 2000. You aren't missing much though with Early Adopter - they offer the same benefits as a Basic account, except the ability to create custom styles and the use of the directory.

Blogging is all about individuality. Choosing one you feel comfortable with using and viewing is a priority. Take a look around when finding a site to blog on - every site should have a FAQ page (Frequently asked questions) and if you can not find what you want to know never hesitate in writing the staff and asking it. You might just end up helping them out and finding your perfect blogging tool all in one.