Blogs - A Phenomenon

Weblogs has become a part of everyone’s life, whether it be for blogging as an electric diary, or a means to express out their anger or problems in life, or for businesses. In Branum (2001), he quotes Werbach who defines weblogs as “frequently updated observations, news, headlines, commentary, recommended links and/or diary entries, generally organized chronologically.” Blogging has become a phenomenon of interconnection between millions of blogs and this domain is now known as a blogosphere (Amit Bhawani 2008)

The constant, speedy improvement of technology has lead to the formation of more bloggers and these bloggers have continued to converge with various social media tools whereby the sharing of blog posts are increasingly done through social networks, reducing the lines between blogs, micro-blogs, and social networks (Sobel 2010, p. 1). 

The current trend for this phenomenon lies in mobile blogging. In this regard, 25% of all bloggers are already engaged in mobile blogging and 40% of bloggers who are engaged in mobile blogging has stated that it has changed the way they blog, encouraging shorter and more spontaneous posts (Sobel 2010, p.1). Another important trend lies in influential blogs from women and moms, especially in the segment of brands as they mostly blog about brands (Sobel 2010, p.1). Research has shown also that 48% of all bloggers believe that more people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs in the next five years than from the traditional media, hence the continuous increase of bloggers (Sobel 2010, p.1).

By 2008, Malaysia recorded 500,000 active bloggers which help ranked Malaysia one of the highest for blogging after Indonesia and the European Union (The Star 2008). The Star (2008) continued to quote Dr. Abu Hassan Abdullah, lecturer of University Malaya, who states that blogs have a wide reach especially in influencing the thinking of people in terms of politics. He goes on to further state that 70% of election results derived from influential information from blogs (The Star 2008).


References:


Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world, The Star, viewed 4 May 2011,

<http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/3/nation/20827588&sec=nation>

Branum, J 2001, The Blogging Phenomenon – An Overview and Theorectical Consideration, JMB Zine, viewed 3 May 2011,
<http://www.ajy.net/jmb/blogphenomenon.htm>

Sobel, J 2010, State of Blogosphere 2010, Technorati, viewed 3 May 2011,
< http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/#ixzz1LoKklqvc>

What is Blogosphere?,  Amit Bhawani, viewed 4 May 2011,

<http://www.amitbhawani.com/blog/what-is-blogosphere/>