Blogging 101: The Newest Trend of the Online World
Sarah Iani
Issue date: 2/16/05 Section: Entertainment
- Page 1 of 5 next >
|
"As usual, I am a trend setter," says Ashby Connors, sophomore at the University of Maine-Farmington.
Connors, who used the server Livejournal.com to start her online journal almost four years ago, rants, raves, and holds discussions on any topic that occupies her mind, all for anyone to read. But the public exposure doesn't faze her one bit.
"I had a sneaking suspicion I was crazy," the 19-year-old says. "And I figured the public could either confirm or deny it."
Connors is one of many that are taking part in the new wave in technology: online journals. In contrast to traditional web logging that lists an author's favorite sites and is focused outside the author, online journals look inward at the author's life through a culmination of thoughts, experiences and opinions.
According to Technorati, a blog analysis firm that tracks almost five million web logs, a new web log is created every 7.4 seconds, culminating in 12,000 new blogs a day.
And the blogosphere continues to grow, doubling every five months over the last year and a half. Technorati reports that the number of blogs is now eight times larger than the last counted 500,000 blogs in June 2003.
Psychologists who study the blog explosion disagree over what exactly compels people to put themselves into cyberspace. However, many see a sense of community in an increasingly isolated world, and with the volume and variety of blogs available, are reluctant to predict an end to the blogosphere world.
Users such as Connors are motivated by the comments their posts receive on their blog, whether from friends or "random" people that stumble upon their journal.
Servers such as Blurty and LiveJournal offer features that allow visitors the ability to search for "random" blogs according to interest or other criteria, and with the click of a button, any reader can write the author a comment.
"Responses a lot of the time are friends who tell me they think I'm dumb, or not dumb, or to make comments on whether or not they agree with what I'm saying," says Connors. "My journal is more like a public portfolio than a diary."
There are many different kinds of journals and blogs, ranging from personal to corporate, on a variety of subjects that are maintained by all ages.
According to LiveJournal.com, 18-year-olds show the largest numbers with 253,656 journals on the site as of Dec. 13, followed closely by 250,375 journals by 17-year-olds. Total accounts on the site number 5,426,984.