I was thinking about the whole concept of blogging the other day and how it is such a far-reaching technology. Before you comment on how much free time I must have, I’ll preface my brain dump with an article that I was reading about last November’s election. One analyst mentioned that the blog enabled candidates and their teams to do “front-line” reporting and provide up-to-the-minute news and analysis to anyone who was willing to read it. Rather impressive when you realize that the concept of blogging has been around for more than eight years, but only widely used within the past two.
Not only is blogging the new pasttime for anyone and everyone with something to say, it is also a growing technology for building user communities and establishing connections worldwide. Take, for example, the concept of Technorati. This is a web application whose purpose is to connect readers to others based on similar interests or categories. Pretty impressive, and definitely sitting in the front car of the idea train. There are other sites devoted to tracking blogs, like Blogwise and Blogdex. Heck, there is even a site for figuring out which blogs are geographically near to you based on your global position. And, more interestingly, there is a fake stock market for trading shares of blogs and helping to increase their virtual value. People seem to use and reference these sites – a lot.
Writing in blogs can be so all-consuming. I find myself getting caught up reading other people’s blogs (David, Halley, RSN, FA) and then think, “wow, there are another six to ten million of these out there.” That truly blows my mind.
One of my favorite blogs has also warped into a thriving community by using the software called “scoop”. The ability for readers to blog diaries at a site creates a much more vibrant community. Interesting that most of the political blogs I read, the liberal blogs support comments but the conservative ones (such as “Blog of the Year” Powerline, do not.
Ah. The favorite blog that I refer to is http://www.dailykos.com
The http://www.dailykos.com site is very cool. Thanks for sharing!
And don’t even get me started on the liberal vs. conservative mindsets behind blogging…
and then there is also blogsnow.com
much like blogdex, just faster and more comprehensive