Blogging - What is it and Why Would I Do It? By Cathy Lindsay At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

We first saw weblogs in the mid-90s with people taking their journals, or diaries, to the internet. It was a fun, rather quirky way for people to share their thoughts with the wider world. Net users quickly shortened weblogs to blogs and some blogs garnered an almost cult following.

The popularity of blogging really began to take off in the late 90s when software was created just to facilitate the ease of creating and maintaining a blog. OpenDiary created the first blog community in 1998 and introduced interactivity by allowing readers to be able to comment. In 1999, blogger.com was launched and this service was to bring blogs to the masses.

In the decade since their introduction, blogs have taken off on a scale that would have dumbfounded the first bloggers. There are still bloggers who use their blog as an online diary of sorts but the purposes of blogs are almost as varied as the people doing the blogging. As technology has advanced, so have the ways to blog. Additions like audio blogging (podcasting) and video blogging (vlogging) have made blogging a rich, multimedia experience.

Blogs are one of the easiest ways to establish a web presence, as there are many blog platforms that eliminate the need to learn how to create a website. Blogger.com is still one of the most popular of the free blogging options. Purchased by Google in 2003, blogger.com offers anyone the option of creating one or more blogs in a matter of minutes. Blogger.com not only has the platform but even provides the web space so that users don't incur hosting charges.

Another popular blog platform is the WordPress platform. WordPress started out in 2003 and is an open source platform. Open source is code that is basically a collaboration with many coders and programmers. No licensing is required and anyone can freely use and modify the code to improve usability or add features. This has resulted in WordPress being the most customizable platform and added to its popularity.

Today's blogs are still being used for online diaries but even more are being created every day for a myriad of purposes. Politicians use blogs to tell their constituents what they stand for. Journalists are blogging the news as it happens. Celebrities, like actors and authors, are keeping in touch with their fanbase. Businesses use blogs to inform their customers of new products and developments.

Blogging is an easy way for anyone to be able to express themselves online. There's no need to learn complicated programming or coding and a blog can be set up almost instantly. You can use your blog to communicate and share with people in ways that email just doesn't allow.

Updating your blog is easy to do from just about anywhere you are. If you're at home on your desktop or on the train with a laptop or a cell phone – if you can get online, you can publish to your blog. So if you're not blogging already, what are you waiting for?

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