Blogging is growing in popularity by leaps and bounds. This is particularly true when you consider the number of weblogs online in 1999 and the number online today. There are almost as many new blogs created each and every day as there were in total before blogs became the media darlings they've become in the last five years.



There have been blogs about many interesting topics, ideas, and pursuits. There are blogs about politics, humor, movies, movie stars, shoes, home improvement projects; even hobbies such as knitting and bowling have made blog rolls.

The question becomes what are the reasons that people blog. The reasons vary from person to person, however, there are a few that seem to stand out among the masses of reasons and are among the most often stated. Here are five reasons people blog:

1) Bloggers enjoy feeling as though they've been heard. This is actually an important part of the blogging process. You have a message to share and an audience with which to share your message. Feedback from readers provides you, as the blogger, with validation and occasionally healthy debate for your statements, opinions, and beliefs.

2) Blogging allows bloggers to establish a virtual identity. For many this is their way of announcing their presence to the world. Not only are they able to make themselves heard, they are also able to be seen for a person that stands out among the many and is at the same time very much like the many. Hopes, fears, dreams, ambitions, talents, and failures define us all. Many of us use our blogs to expand on those definitions with which we measure ourselves.

3) Some people are wise enough to use their blogs for introspective purposes. By blogging we learn more about ourselves. By challenging ourselves to grow, expand, and experience new things, we are also inviting ourselves to look within for insights as to our own natures. We often learn about our own feelings, misconceptions, ideals, and values when we open mindedly study the thoughts and feelings of others, we learn so much more when we take the time to seek our own thoughts and feelings and not only put words to them but also to place them in context.

4) To learn. It sounds quite simple really and yet is something that so many people overlook as a valid reason for blogging. By studying the material that we write about, we often learn things we didn't know in the beginning. Every new nugget of information leads to another and then another.

5) To keep records of our history. Whether your blog is a politic blog that is recording current events in politics or a blog of your favorite bands, music groups, songs, books, etc. It is a record that can be kept for the future. It is an account of your history and a keeper of your memories.

Everyone has a different reason for blogging and some people actually have several reasons for blogging and none of those mentioned above are required. Your reasons for blogging are yours and yours alone and just as valid as any other. The best possible reason to blog, in my opinion, is to have fun and meet new people.