I've never really been a fan of blogging (before this class, of course). There's something weird about it to me-- I'm just a high school junior, and very few people seem to care about what I have to say. So why would I blog?
According to several statistics, there are well over 100 million blogs, not counting China's near 73 million figure. That's a lot of blogs. CyberJournalist reports that there are approximately 18.6 posts per second. So who reads all this? I watched a video on Youtube about blogs, and one of the most interesting things that came up was "Blogs make the news a 2-way street." People comment on other people's blogs, of course, but why? Another point that came up in the informative video, aimed at people who were not aware of what a blog was, claimed that blogs give you "the Power of the Media." (I feel like this deserves capitalization, as it sounded decidedly profound). But how many people out there are actually posting news stories? And are these stories credible in anyway? Having skimmed through the "Next Blog" button on a classmate's blog, I have come to realize that there are several main types of blogs: People tracking someone with an illness, sports, celebrities, and those few people who think everyone needs to know absolutely everything about their lives.
While searching for statistics on the numbers of blogs, I came across this great article, written very much in the style of anAmericanStudies. Specifically, the article deals with the maturity of blogs. Blogs are relatively recent, and only lately have they reached any sort of legitimacy. There are also some great quotes from a Wall Street Journal writer, making an excellent point about blogs
"First, let’s step back and consider why we’re counting blogs at all. You no longer see articles that attempt to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Web by stating how many Web pages there are. But blogs are still in the process of entering mainstream consciousness, so numerical credibility is important; bloggers themselves cite the statistics a lot."
I, through anamericanstudies, have decided blogging isn't so bad, but I still think that people are starting to overestimate their importance and how much people want to know about them .
So, fellow bloggers-- would you blog if it were not a requirement for school? Why or why not? Has blogging through school changed your mind at all?
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Blogging for class has opened my eyes to an aspect of blogging that I had been previously unaware of. I like that it adds some dicipline to my online time, which is otherwise largely unstructued and often travels down paths that lead to facebook. I also like that our specific "blogging community" contains about thirty blogs, enough to keep things interesting, but not so many that it is overwhelming. That is one thing that I do not like about looking at the internet as a whole. There are just too many blogs out there. Intformation overload!
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