Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits of blogging to the community

Blogging, which is described by Dvorak (2002) as "proliferation of public diaries", can be said as an overwhelming phenomenon that changes the way people used to write their diaries and most people are making good use of it.

(Source: Small Business Marketing Guide, 2009)

Technorati (2009) has been constantly providing information about the size of blogosphere in the past few years but there is no solid number for the size in 2009. However, back in year 2008, Technorati (2009) has recorded a number of approximately 133 million blogs since 2002 (Winn, 2009). Furthermore, McLean (2009) stated that the blogosphere is strong and its influence in various fields is still growing rapidly (McLean, 2009). Therefore, we can predict that the size of the current blogosphere will be bigger.

Blogging is now a trend in many countries. In year 2009, the use of twitter and the impact of bloggers on political issues in US and globally are the two leading issues in the blogosphere (Sussman, 2009). Many politicians, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger in US and Lim Kit Siang in Malaysia use Twitter to update about political issues and interact their followers. Blog and Twitter are also used by many celebrities to keep in touch with their fans. In Nigeria, NigerianBloggers.com, is aimed to increase and sustain blogs from Nigeria and they encouraged the Nigerian to blog (Nweke, 2006).

The types of blogs that are prevalent in certain countries varies based on the reader's personal interest, cultural factors and political factors. As we can see, blogs about lomography are now quite popular among youngsters all around the world. In Malaysia, Travel Blogs, Food Blogs and Blogshops are prevalent, based on my own experience. Whereas in China, blogs that are prevalent are Celebrities blogs and blogs about stock exchange, followed by lifestyle personal blogs (Ning, 2007). In UK, blogs about technologies, computers and music are prevalent (Brown, 2007).

Blogs becomes prevalent when readers have high interest in the contents. It is a benefit for the readers to search for the contents they like, and while they are gaining more knowledge and ideas, they also get a chance to share their views and opinion regarding the topics they like. For example, travel blogs benefits the readers because they get to know more about other places and have ideas about where they want to visit.

References:

1. Brown, S 2007, UK Blogosphere: Top 10 British Blogs, Modern Life, viewed 10 April 2010, http://modernl.com/article/uk-blogosphere-top-10-british-blogs


2. Dvorak, J.C. 2002, The Blog Phenomenon, PCMag.com, viewed 10 April 2010, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,12899,00.asp


3. McLean, J 2009, State of the Blogosphere 2009 Introduction, Technorati, viewed 10 April 2010, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009-introduction/


4. Ning, S 2007, China Top 10 Famous Bloggers and Blogs, ShangNing.net, viewed 10 April 2010, http://shangning.net/blog/china-top-10-famous-bloggers-and-blogs.php


5. Nwekw, R 2006, Blogging as a trend in Nigeria, ITREALMS Online, viewed 10 April 2010, http://itrealms.blogspot.com/2006/01/blogging-as-trend-in-nigeria.html


6. Sussman, M 2009, State of the Blogosphere 2009, Technorati, viewed 10 April 2010, http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/


7. Winn, P 2009, State of Blogosphere, Technorati, viewed 10 April 2010, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-introduction/