About A Personal Blog?
54What Is A Personal Blog About?
Everyone blogs, or at least that is the way it seems – the internet if full of millions of blogs covering just about every subject under the sun (and even some that are not!). The speed at which blogging has spread makes it seem like it has been around for as long as the internet (which is now 40 years old) but, as a matter of fact, they have been around for a little over 10 years. The word blog is an abbreviation of the phrase “web log” ( the log being a kind of diary or personal record) and they first appeared in the late 1990s. The first blogs to ever appear were personal blogs where people gave public voice to their opinions and thoughts and the majority of blogs today are still personal ones.
Many people who would like to start blogging do not do so because they are not sure what they can write about and also what subjects will find readers. These questions have answers that are very simple – bloggers can write about anything they have strong opinions on which they want to share with the world and as to the matter of whether there will be readers, the fact is that the internet has people of every kind, opinion and taste and whatever comes out in a personal blog will find people who will read it and respond. A personal blog is often used as a vehicle for spreading awareness about little known issues the blogger is concerned about. This does not mean writing about things that are not well known, although blogs are often used to create interest in subjects that the blogger feels are being overlooked or ignored. But personal blogs also deal with well known subject that make headlines every day because the bloggers feel that the full story is not being told or because they think that there is an aspect of the story that is being ignored or perhaps just to express their agreement or disagreement with popular opinion on it.
It is possible to make a living by being a blogger and a successful personal blog that because of the subject it covers or the style of the author, the type of discussion it generates, the people who respond to it or for any other reason has a large readership can sell advertising space and make money for the author. Personal blogs have a larger social service to perform as may be seen in the cases of countries where press freedom is curtailed and the only way the people in the rest of the world get to know what is really happening is by reading the personal blogs that emerge from these places. Money making and social responsibility are secondary aspects – the main function of a personal blog is to allow the blogger to have his say.
