Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Me... & blogging

The world of blogging is exciting for me. It's a place where opportunities abound - to get noticed, be heard, be part of the digital revolution. As a writer, this new format opens up a whole new world, a chance to be seen, to put myself out there into the blogosphere in the hope that someone, somewhere, will like what I have to say.

I tend towards verbosity, and I get carried away by what I'm writing about, but I will try to keep you all in mind and be concise. Time is limited and a precious commodity, so I don't want to be wasting it.

As well as being a novice blogger, I'm also pretty new to reading blogs. The few I have looked over seem to vary hugely in content, style, length and tone but I guess that's the beauty of it. The freedom to say whatever you want, whenever you like, about whatever takes your fancy. According to Technorati, the top 3 blogs (as at 24th November, 2012) are Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/)- a blog of news and reviews about technology trends and products; the Caucus (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/) a politics and government blog produced by the New York Times; Jezebel (http://jezebel.com/) a general interest blog for women that covers anything and everything from politics and current affairs, to fashion and celebrity gossip.

I can certainly see the appeal, and the movement towards 'citizen journalists' where the public become media producers rather than passive consumers. I can also see, with the right conditions, how the blogosphere can represent a Fifth Estate, someone (or someones) to make the Fourth Estate of traditional journalism accountable. Having said that, I'm sure there are plenty of bad blogs out there. I did try to find an example of one, but googling 'bad blogs' doesn't turn up much, and I suppose after all 'good' and 'bad' are subjective. No doubt there's a willing audience for just about any topic!

I'm hoping that someone out there, apart from my classmates, will stumble upon my humble little blog and enjoy what I have to say, and perhaps post the odd comment or two (just don't criticize me - I don't take it well!). So until next time, goodbye and good blogging.