A Personal Blog Is What You Make it To Be
No one knows how many blogs there are on the internet and what subjects are covered – new blogs keep appearing every moment and there is no subject that is not being blogged about by someone somewhere. Blogs have been around for a little over 10 years although having become a part of so many peoples lives, it seems that they have been in existence for much longer than that. Blogs, or web logs to give them their full name, began in the late 1990s as posts of personal information and opinions by individuals – thus the term “log” as in log book or record. The first blogs to ever appear were personal blogs where people gave public voice to their opinions and thoughts and the majority of blogs today are still personal ones.
A major hurdle for many new bloggers is that they do not know what subject to choose for their blogs because the do not know what subjects are already over exposed and what new subjects people will want to read about. The answer to these questions is very easily found – they can write about anything that interests them or about which they feel strongly and as to who will read it the answer is simply that there is no opinion or interest group not present on the internet so anything posted is of interest to someone. Often little know but important issues have been brought to the public’s notice through personal blogs. This does not mean writing about things that are not well known, although blogs are often used to create interest in subjects that the blogger feels are being overlooked or ignored. Personal blogs are also used to spread awareness of what the blogger thinks are unseen, unappreciated or deliberately concealed aspects of issues of popular concerns as can be seen by the huge number of blogs that comment on what the authors think are hidden aspects of things like the war, the recession, the World Series, The failure of Pakistan as a nation and so on.
A personal blog that is popular and has a regular and loyal bunch of readers can be a money maker for the blogger – it is possible to sell advertising space on the blog and this can be a source of regular income to the author; although since the money paid depends on the regular readership, a blog has to be very popular to earn a significant amount. Personal blogs are powerful tools for spreading news as can be seen from the fact that it was through blogs that the outside world came to know about the crack down on political protestors in Iran when foreign media was banned from the country. Money making and social responsibility are secondary aspects – the main function of a personal blog is to allow the blogger to have his say.
