"Go Blog Yourself!"

This blog or article that Sarah Boxer wrote tries to capture the evolution and importance of blogging. Blogging is a new concept that “for those who don't know, is a journal or log that appears on a Web site. It is written on line, read on line, and updated on line.” With this definition we can enter our journey to understand what seems to be a new writing genre. It is like discussing “neoliberal” economies or “free trade”, these are concepts that have gained popular appeal in the past decades. In this case, blogging has suffered a very fast evolution. “At the beginning of 1999 there were a few dozen blogs, Blood reports. By the end of the year there were thousands, and it was impossible for anyone to keep up. At the end of 2003 there were two million blogs and the number was doubling every five months. In early 2006 Technorati, a search engine that tracks blogs, counted 27 million. In late 2007, the count passed 100 million.” It is shocking to read these facts, and we wonder “how blogs increased at this rate and why?” When we arrive to this question we have “linked” ourselves to blogging itself. The information written on blogs is vast; it ranges from a taboo such as sex to an essay from a scholar regarding classic literature.

Blogs are a source of information that interest everyone, are fast, are available (just need internet) and can relate topics in a progressive manner. You can begin reading a blog about the Iraq war. After a while you decide to look up for the definition of war (Wikipedia). Then probably you will find its etymology. As you read “etymology” you wonder what it means. So you decide to do some further investigation, you click on it. While you “surf” through the definition of the word etymology you find a link to the word “Portuguese.” Click on it, it eventually will transport you to another world of knowledge. So now you scroll down this window and at the bottom you will see the word “Pimba.” Then by just clicking on it you have now entered “a Portuguese depreciatory term used for qualifying a variety of popular Portuguese folk solo singers and bands whose songs are frequently driven by metaphors with sexual meanings.” You decide to continue reading until you find the word “Shakira”, and eventually click on it. Now you have found yourself reading about a “singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer and philanthropist who emerged as a musical prodigy in the music scene of Latin America in the early 1990s. Born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia, Shakira revealed many of her talents in school as a live performer, demonstrating her vocal ability with rock and roll, Latin and Middle Eastern influences with her own original twist on belly dancing.” Keep going down until you find the subtitle “2008-present: She Wolf and forthcoming Spanish album.” Swift your eyes through this paragraph and find the words “She wolf”. Clicking on them will reach out a window with different meanings of these words. Click on the last one, “a female wolf”. Continue searching in the subtitle “Physical and behavioral differences”, find the word xenophobic. So let’s stop our journey at this point, we can realize that with seven reference points we have read from the Iraq war to xenophobia. This is a clear example of the variety of topics we can investigate once we read a blog. Blogs provide the audience infinite possibilities of searching, either directing you to another blog or to a webpage. Some contain comments that incite the reader to explore more about a subject, they create an interest in the public. With this simple clicking expedition we have found the essence of blogging. “Go blog yourself.”