Keeping A Blog Can Be A Great Way Of Telling Your Friends What You Have Been Enjoying – And A Growing Number Of People Are Getting Into The Idea Every Day!

Once computers became readily available to most people for regular use, more and more of the information we gain about breaking news headlines turns up online before television and radio. The very existence of the internet means that a headline can be shared around the world just as speedily as someone can type it or speak it and hit the ‘send’ button.

In recent years, this rapid way of sharing knowledge has led to ever more individuals and businesses wanting to share their own thoughts with the worldwide web – or maybe just their friends or colleagues – and from this desire the concept of blogging came into being. The word ‘blog’ is really a shortened alternative of the original title for these articles: ‘web log’. As is common in this high-tech century that we live in, it has only taken a few years for the noun ‘blog’ and the verb ‘to blog’ to become an accepted part of our language, and many people will understand what you mean if you tell them that you publish your thoughts in a blog.

Blogs can be employed by absolutely anyone to publicise or describe anything that comes to mind. Company blogs are generally used to dispense up-to-date data to either internal users or the business world in general – anything from financial results, management and rights issues to announcing a colleague’s new job, congratulating a member of staff on their birthday or keeping colleagues informed about a team member’s recovery from Laser eye surgery or a broken arm! Entertainers, musicians, theatre companies and many more can post blogs to keep followers up to speed with what they are doing so that people hear about it before the event, and then later a blog can take the form of a review or resumé describing what went on.

But nowadays, more and more people are deciding to write their own blogs and publicise them to their friends, or through links on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Looking at any ‘How To…’ guidance about blogs will send the potential blogger to a number of suggested sites to sign up to which will host the blog for free. These are a bit limiting in that the blog has to be created within the design restrictions that the host site will accept, but there are generally enough options to build a good looking blog page. Naturally, if you’re feeling ambitious and have some idea of web design you can build your own blog page with as many whistles and bells and Laser eye shows as you like, but you do need to have the time and the experience – and the money to pay for a host.

Obviously, every user’s idea of what they want to blog about will differ. A number will use mostly images or videos, some will use just text and a large number will rely on a combination of these three and more besides. A lot of blogs will concentrate on one specific topic – for example, music reviews, articles about a favourite sport, keeping family up to date with a youngster’s achievements and a great deal more. One young man particularly caught the public’s imagination by authoring a blog about his fight against cancer in such an honest and yet amusing fashion that he virtually became a minor celebrity and attracted the attention of the national papers. But it isn’t recommended that everybody starts blogging the gory details of joint replacement operations, Laser eye surgery or treatment for flat feet – not everyone has young Jamie’s writing abilities!

Usually though, personal blogs are just thoughts, opinions and comments that an individual chooses to articulate and share with other people. If someone has a particular topic that they want to tell others about, it can usually be much easier to share that message with all of their friends by pointing them to a blog entry instead of trying to tell several people verbally in different circumstances. For example, trying to describe a recent evening out at the theatre to a parent, a friend, a colleague and a casual acquaintance would elicit four varied versions of the same occasion. One might focus on the actors, one the fantastic set and the accompanying Laser eye light show, a third might explain who also had tickets for the show and the fourth possibly which restaurant was enjoyed afterwards. A blog entry could include all of this information and give everyone a far better description of the evening overall.