Over the last six years or so I have had many run-ins with blogging. Starting in high school many of the people I knew started posting web journals on sites such as LiveJournal, Xanga, and even the now defunct Ujournal. From there a few friends of mine built their own sites, none of which still stand today. I myself jumped into the fray by building a couple of journal-centric sites, of which only one has been kept alive by a free host that doesn’t seem to monitor site activity, that mostly served as a platform to showcase some of my writing and photography in a very informal manner.
Since those days blogs have grown at a blistering pace changing what they are along the way. Most blogs today try to be informative, or at the very least entertaining. Blogs today allow writers, both professional and amateur, to give people instant updates of what is on their mind. This instant gratification form of writing is the most essential shift blogging has brought to writing over the last decade. Even big media outlets have realized the magnitude of this change and sites such as ESPN.com and CNN.com (towards the middle of the page) have either hired a slew of new writers or have assigned their existing writers to the blogsphere.
It is inevitable, however, that no matter what platform people choose to write in, what they say will not be something for everyone to agree upon, nor will the authors mean for it to be. Opinions will resonate in writing for as long as mankind chooses to write. Blogging merely amplifies this concept by giving everyone a voice, including those who would not have otherwise been able to express themselves to such a large audience.
From this point forward who knows where blogging will go. It may continue to separate into smaller and smaller pieces that eventually become something new and different altogether, or it could become a group that is increasingly closer knit and unified as blogging for the sake of blogging. 2010s here we come.
