The Blog-o-sphere

This isn't the first time I have used blogger - having used it once before for an English Literature class project - but even since then a lot of things have changed. One of my biggest problems with was and is the fact that unless you have HTML editing capabilities it isn't easy to customize the website. The interface is not very intuitive and definitely puts a lot of restrictions on your creativity.

The good thing, however, about blogger is how quickly and easily you can create and monitor the blog. All it takes is a couple of clicks to start up and although these blogs may end up looking generic, at least it gives people without the money or knowledge of blogs to still give it a shot and put their thoughts out into the world wide web (or the 'Blog-o-sphere' as it has come to be known by some).



One of the first blogs I examined was the blog of an independant musician Amanda Palmer (blog.amandapalmer.net). She uses her blog to promote her music, her touring and sometimes just to wax poetic. She is a bit of a media mogul, also having a huge twitter following, and this kind of internet based fan community has really worked in her favour. Through her blog and other forms of social networking she has raised money for projects, started communities, performed private online concerts and even has used her fanbases help to jumpstart another young musician's career.



Perez Hilton (www.PerezHilton.com) is another internet success story whose blog I follow. His blog, however, is not used to promote himself as much as to keep everyone informed on media happeningns and celebrity inside information. He has a massive following and has actually become famous solely due to the inside view into hollywood life that he offers through his blog. The blog he runs is essentially the online equivolent of a popular magazine.

Wellington Financial blog (www.WellingtonFund.com/blog) is much more practical and informative than either of the other two, and is actually a sort of news and information blog. Instead of picking up a magazine or newspaper you just have to visit this blog to get all the latest information in the world of business, finance and politics. It's definitely much more official and streamlined than the other two, which can be seen clearly even just by the format. The stark white and black colorscheme is very clean and professional looking unlike the fun pink of Perez Hilton and the black and green of Amanda Palmer.

These three blogs alone show the vast variety of different ways that blogging can be used. It can be used for self promotion, for archiving information, for keeping everyone up to date on news and even just for sharing gossip. If you are creative with the technology at your fingertips the ideas are endless. Blogs are great because unlike newspapers you can literally find blogs that go into extensive detail on any topic you want. A newspaper keeps you up to date on general events that are occuring, but with a blog you get the specific information you need and want to know. Blogs are also superior in the fact that they don't waste paper and don't cost money to read! The only reason you need to be wary is that, like I said earlier, just about anyone can create a blog and put their content out there, so you can't always 100% trust what a blog has to say.

My overall opinion on blogs is that they're fun and simultaneously useful. You read only what you want to read, and you get all the information instantaneously. How can you go wrong?