Rising Popularity of
Blogging
The year 2004 marked the increase in the popularity
of blogging, as political consultants and news services
started considering it a formidable tool to reach out to the
masses and create opinions. The recent example of its
increasing popularity is Tom Watson, MP. He did not campaign
actively, but he started blogging to bond with his
constituents.
There is a regular coverage of both blog
as well as blogging by the Columbia Journalism Review.
Nowadays, blogs are being printed and are available in the
market. Famous bloggers are appearing on television as well as
radio. Famous mainstream television programs are also forming
their personal blogs, like Hardball by Chris Matthews. Blogs
played a key role in the Rathergate scandal.
Bloggers
are also moving to some other media. Among the few famous
bloggers, who appeared in radio and television are Duncan
Black, Glenn Reynolds, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, and Marie Cox.
Hugh Hewitt is one such famous example. He is a media
personality and later moved in the other direction.
During the 2004 Tsunami, a few bloggers were the major
source of significant news. For instance, Medecins Sans
Frontieres, a famous blogger, sent text messages through SMS
in order to report the affected areas in Sri Lanka and South
India.
In the beginning of 2005, amateur blogging
took-off in a grand manner. The main stream US media started
using terms, such as, alternative media for blogging. Sameer
Bhat and Delilah Boyd are those bloggers who are known for
their creativity as well as clarity of content. There is
another example of the growing popularity of blogging related
to the significant recent launching of The Guardian
Newspaper. On September 2005, this newspaper had launched a
redesign that incorporates a daily digest of interesting
blogs.
Fortune Magazine in its January 2005 edition
has listed around eight bloggers that cannot be ignored by
businesspersons. They are Peter Ro Jas, Xeni Jardin, Ben
Trott, Mena Trott, Jonanthan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert
Scoble and Jason Calacanis.
Blogging is gradually
gaining great popularity and success. There are two major
causes for its immense popularity - citations or permalink and
affiliation or blogroll. In the MIT Media Lab, researchers
launced the Blogdex project to enter the web and collect
information from the thousands of blogs regarding their social
properties. Open Source movement is another cause for its
immense popularity. Bloggers are fully supporting this
movement, due to the free speech nature of technology. This
technology has assisted blogging to generate social impact.
Open Source Politics is another term that is gaining
immense popularity because people are able to participate in
politics directly. Blogs are also considered as the archives
of human thought. It is the direct human thought that touches
the human soul somewhere, which accounts for the popularity of
blogging.
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