(b) Blog: Who Writes What

Blogs as current phenomenon and benefits to the current community


Blog. Blog is now hit among everyone, from all ages around the world. So what is so interesting about blog? What is a blog?

Blogger (2009), the weblog hosting site define blog as "a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world". In other words, a blog is a web site that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) to the older entries towards the bottom where you update it at an on-going basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. (Rowse, 2005)


Upon writing this, I stumble into this amazing clip from Commoncrafts.com that explains everything I want to say in less than 3minutes!



The Blogosphere is the collective community of all blogs. (Technorati. Inc, 2008) Technorati defines the Active Blogosphere as: The ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation. They have recorded that the size of blogosphere is doubling in each 200 days or to say on average 175,000 blogs created in 30days!

With blog, it opened up a whole wide world to everyone and anyone for free! Regardless of where and when. With this, it widen the horizon of busy housewives, retired elderly who sits at home, and even a 6-year-old children! It enables them to 'go' wherever they want, at a cost for free.

One of the most significant effect(or changes) that blogosphere brings about in Malaysia, is the switch of ruling party after the election of 8th March 2009. For the first time ever, more states are ruled by the oppositional parties and that, mark yet another milestone in the history of Malaysia. The reason that bring about this change is none other than, blog. Malaysian political leaders such as Lim Kit Siang, Jeff Ooi and Anwar Ibrahim have managed to share and communicate through this easily-accessible platform.

From this, it is seen that there is great potential of participatory democracy in Malaysia. Go bloggers, more will come, more will be served, and you are going to change the world!



References:

1. Blogger.com, 2009, Blogger Tour: What's a blog?, viewed 10 June 2009, at http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g
2. Blogging 'set to peak next year' 2006, BBC News, viewed 10 June 2009, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6178611.stm
3. Rowse, D., 2005, What is a blog?, viewed 10 June 2009, at http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/02/05/what-is-a-blog/
4. Youtube 2007, Blogs in Plain English, viewed 2 June 2009, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI
5. Technorati, 2009, State of the Blogosphere 2008, viewed on 27th May 2009, at http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere