Do you blog? I do. Well, a little.
These days, blogs are white hot, among other things. Perhaps a definition or two for the non-bloggers would be helpful.
Blogs are a creature of the Internet, and “blog” is cyber-shorthand for “web log.” Beyond that, things get a little fuzzy as far as what is a blog and what isn’t and exactly what happens on them.
A new study from UCI, which is in Irvine, looked at who bloggers are and what they do on their favorite blogs. Should you care? Maybe.
The “blogosphere,” shorthand for the universe of blogs, can make things happen in a big way these days — in politics, in business, the media, you name it. More on that in a moment.
The first blogs, called personal blogs, were private affairs, online journals really, by individuals who built a simple website with words and pictures about their petunias or their pooch or their excellent adventure in Savannah in Georgia or the savanna in Africa, or both.
Most of them didn’t know or care if anyone ever saw their blog — they just enjoyed writing it. But then a funny thing happened in cyberspace.
Let’s say you’re searching for information about pooches or petunias or Savannah in Georgia or the other one when you run across a blog about exactly what you’re looking for.
If petunias are your passion, maybe you find someone named Lavinia and her Petunia Paradise blog.
For a while, you’re just a casual observer but then one day you ask Lavinia for advice on keeping your Pekinese from peeing on your petunias, which is making you crazy and the petunias depressed.
Since both your question and Lavinia’s answer — “put pepper spray on the petunias” — are posted on the blog, a Pekinese breeder from Pacoima says, “Holy Cat, Lavinia, whadda-u-nutz?” and all of a sudden a gazillion people are posting messages about Pekinese, pepper spray and who knows what all and checking Petunia Paradise every morning to catch the latest exchange.
That’s how it started. But shortly thereafter blogs grew up to be big and strong and became fancy things like the Drudge Report with ads and 10,000 links to other sites.
