Blog or not to Blog?

The advent of blogging has permanently changed the terrain of the communication landscape. Any person, business and community can communicate a message unedited, without another individual or group’s editing or bias. The popularity of Internet blogging has opened a new realm; providing a communication tool that has revolutionized how news and information can be sent and received.

Compare the current communication fragmentation today to what communication avenues were used just a decade ago. At that time, traditional media held television, radio and newspapers largely distributed much of the power, the news and information. Any message or news wanting to be released to the public and its constituents by a person, business and community was at the discretion of the traditional media. Even when that information was distributed, it could easily been misinterpreted, changed, or delivered with a group or person’s bias and/or editing process.

Blogs changed all that, opening up the world to any individual, company or organization that has a message to share. The opportunity offers the capability to share the news and information, unfettered, with the world.

Consider this era of instant gratification, where a 24-hour news cycle has created short-term attention spans, where consumers want news and information at their fingertips, blogs provide an avenue to provide information instantaneously.

The art of blogging has created “cottage” industries and niche markets to find information. There are an infinite number of blogs that discuss a variety of topics. You name it; someone is on the Internet talking about it, from apples to zippers. One of the largest groups of bloggers is mothers, who are sharing information from the best clothes, health care tips, day care, etc. In fact, some of those mothers have found themselves making money from their blogs. Companies will supply a group of bloggers with clothing to test and review, thus supplying those corporations with a “real person” recommendation to potential buyers.

While blogging began as a way to share information, it certainly turned into a money making endeavor, on Blogger.com, for example you may select a way to monetize your blog. Corporations see another opportunity to get their message out to a populace.

Blogging itself is a topic on blogs and websites: http://weblogs.about.com/od/startingablog/tp/Top-Ten-Reasons-to-Blog.htm


The downside to blogging is the concern that the facts provided cannot be verified. They offer an outlet for an individual to share news, opinion, and conjecture with very little parameters or a checks and balances system. It will be interesting to see how this type of dynamic plays out, since there is little policing, if possible for blogs.

Are blogs going to disappear? Most likely not, as they provide a way for anyone to communicate and share information, providing them with a “voice” that cannot be easily silenced. In this era where information is shared and gathered at such a breakneck speed, blogging provides the communication channel to be an important part of such a communication landscape.

Hello!

If you count Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, then I have blogged, if not, this is my first entry into the blogging world!

You will see several blogs over the next several weeks on various topics, as part of the homework for the class I am taking at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri.