Blogging

It was eye opening reading blog world’s ‘history of blogging’, it was indeed hard to believe that blogging as we know it has only been around since 1999. I suppose I never even questioned the origin of the word ‘blog’. It was however interesting to read that the creator of Live Journal,  Jorn Barger first used the term as a combination the words ‘web’ and ‘log’. It is easy to see how blogging in its many forms has taken so quickly to the people of the internet. While more structured social networking platforms such as Myspace and Facebook certainly enjoyed more mainstream popularity blogging has developed as an alternate social community often tailored to those with my specific common interests. Users seek the opportunity to connect with others and share their opinions on whatever it is that gets them out of bed in the morning within that particular online community. Whether your passion is politics, design, music or photography there is almost certainly and blog out there to satisfy ones interest. I remember one of my friends ended up going on a date a while back and only later realised he'd read her music review blog even before he met her. While blogging sites are not so different to other social networking sites in the way that they give users a template to work from, often allowing users the creativity to customise their own page and the freedom for would be journalists to present a news length article in the way they want the world to see it. In fact many academics are now operating blogs and some universities even encourage their students to keep an online journal in such a format; Swinburne is no exception! When I browsed over at this weeks topic for my Social Media subject I initially assumed I'd  have quite a bit to learn about on the topic, as I never considered myself to be much of a 'blogger'. However, oddly enough it did not occur to me that both Twitter and Tumblr are some of the worlds largest blogging powerhouses on the planet. Both of which I have a degree of familiarity with, especially tumblr. I wasn't quick to recognise tumblr as a blog because I've always seen blogging in the more traditional sense, as a 'web log'. Somewhere to keep an open journal. Twitter isn't something that's really grabbed me yet, as I dont have a great deal of interest in keeping up to date with celebrity gossip or sharing generic type trending tweets hoping that people I've never met before will be appreciative enough to re-tweet my thoughts and feelings. I do however enjoy art and photography, so I have used tumblr a bit in the past. It was good while it lasted but I still dont feel as if I've yet found my place in the world of blogging.

www.blogworld.com/2011/08/24/the-history-of-blogging-years-of-blogs/