Blogs and Bloggers: What Are Blogs, and Why Do We Blog?

It's a Blog, Blog, Blog. Blog World

Don Willard, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Feb 22, 2006 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

It's a blog, blog, blog, blog world.

What is all this talk of blogs? What is a blog, and why do so many people have them? The simple answer to "why?" is "because they can." The Internet, and blogging in particular, hath made writers of us all. So let's take a look at the world of blogs, shall we?

What is a blog?

The word "blog" is a blend of the words "web" and "log." A blog is a web log. Or in other words, a blog is an Internet journal. It's a way for people to jot down thoughts, vent, rant, or just discuss whatever is on their minds. Regular, ordinary citizens of the world use blogs to air their personal feelings on various topics, and then leave these musings where anyone can have a look at them. Many blogs even allow for comments by the reader, so that the musings become conversations of a sort.

Who blogs?

Regular people like you and me blog. Some use blogs to keep friends and family updated - a virtual written discourse resembling the letters people once sent regularly before electronics or even electricity. In fact, some blogs are like those letters you receive at Christmas that are mass printed, generic, and usually braggadocios "updates" of the writer's life and times for the year past. But rather than print and mail annually, a blogger can post regular updates, and leave them to be read without need of envelope or stamp.

Others use blogs to convey information, or delineate a personal or political agenda. Particularly in the area of politics, blogging has taken off. And why not? This is better than the newspaper or the network news, or even the local news, in that it is interactive and it is pulled in rather than pushed out. By this I mean that someone reading a blog for information on current events, politics, or religion is actively seeking that information, and is pulling it in to his home or office. In contrast, the news media decide what information we want, and then push it at us. The blogosphere (yes that is what it is called) is free market, targeted, niche information at no cost to the user.

How big is political blogging?

An entire article could be written on the subject of political blogging. For now, let's just say that nearly every politician has a blog, or is part of a bigger blogging site, and most news outlets - including your local, hometown news - have blogs where information is posted, comments are reviewed, and feedback is obtained. Here are a few links to blog directories to help you find what you are looking for:

http://directory.etalkinghead.com - a directory of religious and political blogs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/marketing/blog - more politics
http://technorati.com/ - a general blog directory
http://www.blogcatalog.com/ - another general directory

There are many other blogs and blog directories out there. If this small sample doesn't help you, just Google the word "blog."

The age of "push" media is drawing to a close

When you go to a restaurant, does the menu typically consist of one item, or one method of preparation which you are forced to eat? Of course not! Yet we have been forced to "eat" from the news media's menu only that which they want us to eat. The one-sided, corporate sponsored media megalopolis has just met its match in the tiny little blog. The information consumer's ability to choose is beginning to crack the old world monoliths, and we may see a day in our lifetimes when those big dinosaurs become extinct, out-lived by the smaller, quicker, more adaptable blog-beasts.

And so?

So kick up your feet, launch your browser, and enjoy the freshest, silliest, wildest, most hard-core, most salient, most prurient, and most available cacophony of information there is. Blog, or be blogged - enter the fray.

Published by Don Willard

Don is a freelance writer, husband, and father of four. He and his wife run an educational enrichment center. He writes fiction, humor, and various types of articles. See some of his published fiction at... View profile