However, I started to divert my eyes to 'wider blog world', and ended up making my new google blog, Blooger. Then, what made me think that Blogger is the wider blog world than my Korean blog? That is because blog is not just a web archives, but a "social networking" archive service in which I can 'interact' with people. In Blogger's case, I can interact with people from all over the world since google is connected with almost every countries.
Then, I can now explain that I started to blog here in order to jump into the wider blog world, which is Blogger.
And, as my first step to a blog, I want to consider what the "blog" is.
Then, what on earth is blog?
a Blog is a portmanteau of "web" and "log", so it's a weblog where people freely leave their logs on a website.
It can be said that a blog appeared after World Wide Web had been created.
At first, the blog was a kind of one-way type, but it started to become 'interactive' type, and these days, it is one kind of the social networking service since blog writers and readers can interact one another.
What for?
I think a blog has two main types which are
1) a blog which is mainly for a blogger's own content but the blogger shares it with other people.
2) a blog which is mainly for spreading a blogger's ideas or certain information to many other people.
The first type - for a blogger's own content - seems like an open diary. bloggers can write about their ordinary life events, their own thoughts and even their private stuff. They can write about what they did for the weekend, what they saw at the theatre, how they feel right now and what they bought, and share them with other random people or certain blog mates on the internet.
Since the second type of blog has certain purposes, the impact of each blog is much bigger than the first type of a blog.
How influential?
a blog has characteristics of what internet has - It can be spread to many other people all over the world through the internet whenever and wherever. While the conventional media spread their articles to only subscribers, blog articles can be spread to whomever interested, so it can be more influential than the conventional media.
when it comes to types of the influence, I think there are mainly two types intentional influence - commercial one and political one.
If bloggers write about flaws of a certain product on their blogs, then many people would see it and it would be spread to many other people, which would end up decresing selling of the product.
On the other side, if people write about good things about a certain product and recommend it to other people on their blogs, the company of this product could take advantage of promotion effect, so some companies deliberately make their own blogs and use them for promotion. That could be the one example of the commercial influence of blog.
Another example is the political influence of blog. If a top celebrity shows support for a certain candidate during a campaign period, many people would also follow the celebrity's support, and that would increase the possibility of the candidate's winning the election.
As discussed above, a blog has much more influential power than people really think. The blog is not complete media stuff, but it surely has characterstics of media, so when bloggers write down what they think on their blogs, they should carefully consider what could happen and what could be influenced. Blogs could totally change someone's life or endanger a certain company.
Prospects...
the number of bloggers are increasing and the professional level of bloggers is also increasing. I think blog service would get bigger and bigger, and the influential power of blog would also do so. This means that the significance of blog media is getting larger and bloggers need to consider their bloging important.
If each bloggers tries hard to make their best blog, the blog world would be the most wonderful cyberspace.
wow, the first post has become such a long text. now, it's time to jump into the blog. :)
Good to see you all!
