A Few Words on Blogging

I'm going to deviate away from my analysis of news and political events, and say a few words about blogging. I've been regularly contributing to this blog my own opinions and analysis of the events that occur daily in the world for a couple of weeks--have about 20 posts for the last two months. It is also a pleasure to watch the counter tick upwards the number of people who actually view this site--although I sort of wonder how many of those "clicks" are my own, just to check to see if the layout is okay. I would guess I must be doing something right if people are coming to my blog to read what I have to say.

Enough self-congratulations. I'm starting to realize that blogs can become a major force within the communications and printing industry. I knew nothing about blogs until I logged into Google's Blogger and developed my own site. It is so easy for people to connect into the web, and write a "Dear Diary" of whatever subject they feel like writing about--be it politics, news, music, computers, cell phones, video games, girls, boys, or even their own deepest emotional feelings and fantasies which they would write in the pages of a real diary before the advent of the computer. A blog site was responsible for exposing forged records of George Bush's national guard service which CBS News had reported, causing Dan Rather to resign. I can't say how many political blogs there are--I hate/love George Bush or I hate/love John Kerry--where each side demonizes the other, while pandering to their extremist audience, ready to devour each word in delicious ecstasy. Then there are the bogs that, in the immortal words of Jerry Sienfeld, say nothing at all. They are the blogs where the authors post entries on how they watched Batman the other day, or how they listened to a certain song on the radio, or how they argued with the local Wendy's manager, saying they ordered a chili instead of a baked potato.

You don't like soup? Then NO SOUP FOR YOU!

BusinessWeek wrote a major story on the nature of blogs last May 2. There are 9 million blogs out there, with some 40,000 being created each day. With so many blogs floating in cyberspace, and the ease of use in creating a blog, businesses are going to have to wake up and somehow adapt the blog to reflect their business operations. Businesses have been able to refine, convey, and control their message through the mass media of print, radio, and television. They have been able to target their audiences through market research surveys, determining who would buy what, then pitch to the selected markets with niche advertising. Blogs have turned the mass media upside down. Bloggers refine their own message in their blogs, then link it to other bloggers. In a way, a blog can take off like that of the Suave commercial--you'll tell your two friends about a message blog, and they'll tell their two friends, and so on, and so on. Blogs combine both the public's right of freedom of speech and press with the method of conveying that message to the widest possible audience, instantaneously.

How do companies cash into this new service? Companies can certainly use statistical software programs to track millions of blogs to see how the public may feel about their image. Google has also developed it AdSense program which pays bloggers to host Google ads on their blog sites. But companies are certainly going to have to do more. They are going to have to find a way to merge advertising and public relations into a new service which can convey knowledge and information to its customers. Companies may also develop partnerships or sponsorships with the large blog sites in conveying advertising. Or perhaps there may be new relationships forged between advertisers, the mainstream media (newspapers, magazines, television, and radio), and bloggers. Right now, the world of blogs is in a state of dynamic flux. It is both exciting, and scary.