Although online journals of one kind or another have been around almost as long as the web itself, they began to be recognized as a growing phenomena in the mid 1990s and, since the term "blog" itself was coined in 1999, the whole world has come to recognize them as a communication medium to compete with newspapers, magazines, radio and television.



Originally, many bloggers were seen as online "exhibitionists"; since they appeared to, merely be exposing their private lives to the prying eyes of millions by writing personal diaries and allowing the world to read them. The effect of many of these personal online journals was to create small online communities of people around those diarists; who would sympathize, encourage and share their own thoughts and experiences. The social networking phenomena of later years was built on just this kind of social network.

As more and more people began blogging its reputation, as a medium for the mundane, changed. The private thoughts and intimate journals continue to this day, but the power of a medium which allows instant publishing, to potentially millions, has been slowly recognized and engaged with by millions.

Today, you will find blogs on every topic imaginable; from the private angst ridden thoughts of an adolescent to the most up to date industry information by a computer industry insider, or a news reporter in a war torn country. It is the technology of blogging which has allowed these sites to thrive so greatly in such a, relatively, short period of time; to paraphrase Karl Marx: blogs allow the ordinary person to "seize the means of production"; they sidetrack all traditional production cycles and allow a creator to instantly publish whatever they wish.

The simplicity of most blogging platforms means that within a few short minutes even the most non-technical person can begin to publish their thoughts, opinions and ideas to the whole of the worldwide web. This is not an appeal restricted to the personal journalist, the ease of use of the platform means that news stories, industry updates and reviews can all be written out in text and published without the need to add any formatting or get to grips with file transfer protocols or html editors.

The simple, and instant, nature of blogs is really at the heart of their popularity and wide spread use. Partly because of this wide spread, and wide ranging use, blogs are often quickly available to search engines and will often rank well.

Search engine developers are generally agreed that, due to their "home made" and partisan nature, blogs are characteristically the source of unique, original and relevant content, which is regularly updated or added to. Fulfilling these essential criteria, blogs often appear high up on search engine results and frequently appear in results soon after creation.

This is enhanced by the fact that most blog authoring tools allow you to blog and ping; what this means is that each time you add to or update your blog, the blog technology will automatically send a signal to a number of servers to let them know your blog has updated. Most website technologies do not include this function and, therefore, have to wait for the search engines to find their new content.

For all the reasons that blog platforms have become popular among diarists, reporters, reviewers and other writers, blogging has become popular among internet marketers. The instant nature of blogging allows a marketer to focus upon their message and not spend undue time formatting their site. All blogs, these days, allow an almost instant image change where a wide range of color, text, graphics and layouts are available to choose from.

This means a marketer can quickly and easily give their message a unique appearance and make instant changes if they change their mind. The blog and ping feature is also very popular among marketers. The instant publishing followed by quick search engine listing is ideal for most marketers and blogs are quickly becoming an industry standard technology for business people and marketers wishing to get a message out quickly, simply and efficiently.

If the personal web page saw the reins of power shift towards the individual, if they had the technical know how to take those reins; then blogs see that power entirely within the range and capacity of all people, for all purposes.