Blogosphere.
Today thought can be expressed through blogging, which is a powerful solution for writing about what is in your mind and getting immediate feedback. Navigating from one blog to another it is possible to find people with similar interests, likes or dislikes, e.g. people who discuss about cooking or politics, joined in a blogging community. All blogs are united in a corporate community or blogosphere that can also be viewed as a wide social network or a global conversation through blog entries and commentaries.
Aaron Barlow states that "the blogs are not an original twenty-first-century phenomenon but /.../ a continuation of and old American tradition [of public opinion] in a new technological milieu" (Barlow, xviii). Blogging originates from personal diaries, chronicles, newspaper articles and so forth. Before the advent of the World Wide Web people expressed their opinion and thoughts through the local bulletin board systems where discussion threads were created. Barlow names them "parents of the blogs" (Barlow, 143). The word "blog" comes from the word "weblog" which was coined three years after the appearance of the first presumable blog in 1994 by Justin Hall. The modern blog developed from Open Diary which was founded in 1998 [1]. At the beginning there were a few blogs, the number of which has grown vastly during the last years. According to Technorati "the lines between what is a blog and what is mainstream media become less clear. Larger blogs are taking on more characteristics of mainstream sites and mainstream sites are incorporating styles and formats from the Blogosphere." Still, they are looking at active blogosphere as "the ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation" [2].
Blogosphere involves different types of blogs which can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time of the day. In their blogs people write about their personal life, work, politics, or any other various topics with a personal touch. They document important events with photos, embeddable videos, audio or photo presentations from SlideShare. There are ready-made applications that help to change the appearance of a blog and make it rich in content. It is possible to add photos taken with a camera phone directly from the portable device, because a blogger is given a unique address to access the blog with a mobile phone. There is a possibility to embed special widgets like games, quizzes, chat rooms or even document sharing devices.
Blogs can be different in content, for example music blogs share music videos, audio and reviews; blogging through a mobile phone device is called moblogging, that means saving content like pictures, videos and audio, and posting them online; business blogs or b-blogs are a good way to reach people by describing what the company does or reviewing a product and getting feedback; microblogging via Twitter or Friendfeed lets people convey short messages about important topics and create a shared stream of information [3]; the main source of information of a video blog or a Vlog is video, e.g. YouTube videos; photoblog's main information source is a photo stream, e.g. photos taken from Flickr photo storage site [4]. Every blog entry has its own web address and tags, which are easy to track. There is a possibility to send blog content even through other applications, because it is possible to interact with various other social networks.
Connections between bloggers can be tracked by blog monitoring sites like Technorati, BLOG.Station, and BlogPulse [5]. With the help of those sites blogosphere is easier to navigate and more likable blogs are easier to find with the help of thematic categorization. Bloggers are of different nations (Technorati has tracked blogs in 81 languages in 2008), ages, preferences and countries. Blogosphere has become a multi-national, vast global network which helps people to communicate with the whole world, thus making blogging a growing phenomenon, a part of our daily lives. A large user group has made blogosphere a powerful means of reaching people either by politicians or companies. I think that the future of blogs is in continuous change, but they will remain an easy solution of expression of thought and getting feedback.
[1] http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/history_of_blogging.asp
[2] http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/
[3] http://friendfeed.com/about/
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere
Used sources:
1. William H. Gates. "Teel tulevikku. Täiendatud ja ajakohastatud väljaanne." Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, 1998.
2. Aaron Barlow. "The Rise of the Blogosphere". Praeger Publishers, 2007. A Google book preview (http://books.google.com/books?id=PfCYTJFebKIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0)
3. Barbara O'Brien. "Blogging America. Political Discourse in a Digital Nation." William James & Company, 2004. A Google book preview (http://books.google.com/books?id=W_yGmNbCYc8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0)
4. Kirchhoff, Bruns, & Nicolai. "Investigating the Impact of the Blogosphere: Using PageRank to Determine the Distribution of Attention", 2007. http://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/EXPORT/DL/38960.pdf. 24. June, 2009.
5. Sifry. "State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth", 2006. http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000432.html. 24. June, 2009
6. Sifry. "State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 2: On Language and Tagging", 2006. http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000433.html. 24. June, 2009.
7. Wikipedia. "Internet", 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet. 27. June, 2009.
8. Wikipedia. "Sociology of the Internet", 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_the_Internet. 27. June, 2009.
9. Wikipedia. "Blogosphere", 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere. 27. June, 2009.
10. Wikipedia. "Canadian Blogosphere", 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Blogosphere. 27. June, 2009.
11. McGann, Rob; ClickZ. "Blogosphere by Numbers", 2004. http://www.clickz.com/3438891. 27. June, 2009.
12. Cohen, Heidi; ClickZ. "Use Blogs to Extend Social Reach, Drive Online Sales", 2009. http://www.clickz.com/3633904. 27. June, 2009.
13. Technorati. "State of the Blogosphere / 2008", 2009. http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/ 27. June, 2009.
14. Lacy, Sarah; Skynet. "Blogosphere Today and Angst Video", 2008. http://belsec.skynetblogs.be/post/6395735/blogosphere-today-and-angst-video-. 27. June, 2009.
15. Wikipedia. "Micro-blogging", 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging. 01. July, 2009.
16. Wikipedia. "Photoblog", 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoblog. 01. July, 2009.
17. Wikipedia. "MP3 Blog", 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3_blog. 01. July, 2009.
