Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community

The picture of an increases size of blogosphere.
(source: Technorati 2008)

Today’s practice of blogging often link to the concept of online personal journal. Winner (2003) noted that blog is “unedited, published voice of people” William Quick (2001) defined the term blogosphere is the ‘intellectual cyberspace’ that bloggers occupy (cited in Ferdig and Trammell 2004). As stated by Bowers and Stoller (2005), since March 2005 the total number of blogs has grown from 7.8 million to 14, 2 million, and this rate is doubling in size every five months.

There are varieties of blogging topics. It include of personal and professional topics. In Asia, mostly music blog are more popular than politic. In Europe, personal, lifestyle, and religious topics are less popular (Technorati 2008). The favoring topics in America are politics and technology. Besides that, US have the most weblog of any other nations.(Coates 2003 cited in Norton 2004)

Furthermore, there are some positive impacts of blogging for personal and professional life. For personal life, most of bloggers recognize that blogging increase their circle of friends, brought them closer to their circle of friends and family members, and also get them to more engage with their hobbies. For professional life, most of professional and corporate bloggers recognize positive impact from their blog. The surveys shows that half of them are better known in their industry and one in four have used their blog as a resume enhancement.(Technorati 2008)

Reference

Bowers,C & Stoller,M 2005, ‘ Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere: A new force in American politics,viewed 7 June 2009, http://commonsenseblog.typepad.com/common_sense/files/The-Emergence-of-the-Progressive-Blogosphere.pdf

Ferdig, RE,Ph.D &Trammell,KD 2004, ‘ content delivery in the blogosphere’, The Journal online, University of Florida, viewed 6 June 2009, http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5006872677

Norton,K 2004 , ‘ Blogs: creating democracy and ensuring access’, viewed 7 June 2009, http://www.kellegous.com/scratch/2004/cms790/blog-access-draft.pdf

Technorati 2008, State of blogosphere, viewed 7 June 2009,
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/