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What Is A Blog

Blogs and Blogging has become one of the greatest pastimes of this century. The word “blog” is derived from “weblog” and these days everybody is doing it . . .  Captain Kirk had his “Captains Log”, and we can all have our very own blog or blogs available on the Internet for all to read.

A blog is really an on-line journal, but they’re not like the secret diaries which my big sister used to keep hidden in the shoe box under her bed (yes, we found them!) these are open for all to read (which was the same for her diaries occasionally when she was out and my friends came round, who on earth was Brian?), but that’s another story. Sorry sis . . .

What Is A Blog

So we’ve established that blogs are journals which are regularly updated and available for the whole world to read. The art of blogging hasn’t half caught on too, once it was restricted to the technical geeky types who could figure out how to do it, now anybody can do it if they have access to the Internet and manage to find one of those websites which make it easy to blog for free.  Some of these really interesting bloggers have a following of thousands . . . people who are genuinely interested in what they had for breakfast and how many puddles the new puppy left on the kitchen floor last night. Oh well, it takes all sorts.  Some people just like to hear the sound of their own voice and get a kick out of seeing their latest thoughts in print, well, it’s sort of print but not really. Other people just waffle on regardless (careful . . . I heard that!)

Blogs these days are getting pretty interesting in many other ways. Instead of people relating every detail of their lives twenty or thirty times a day they actually write about things which interest them, and build up a team of followers and friends who have the same hobbies and interests helping each other out with snippets of information. There are blogs about EVERYTHING these days, from gardening to celebrity gossip to feeding the family for under $5 – for a week!! No, don’t go searching for that one now, stay here, I was only joking and giving you an example! Okay, you get the idea?

Who Can Have A Blog

You can . . . It doesn’t have to cost you anything at all, in fact, some people make quite a tidy sum out of blogging (allegedly), but for the majority of us it’s just a way to get our thoughts down on paper, keep in touch with friends and family across the miles (you can post photos and everything – Isobel’s first birthday party, the dint in Moms car after Sammy’s first driving lesson – you know the sort of thing) and just generally embrace a worldwide community of cyber pals and fellow bloggers who like to keep in touch. Never before has there been the opportunity for so many to write so much about so little . . . and actually have people who want to read it.