The blogosphere and current blogging phenomenon

For those of you who are heavily involve with the world of online blogging, blogosphere is a term that you can easily associate with. For the rest of the internet users, it is like a never-ending jigsaw puzzle. Blogosphere is basically a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections with each other. Once you start blogging, you become part of this huge ‘family’.

According to Rob McGann (2004), over the past years, blogs have gone from being a word that sounded insulting to an online trend embraced by many. In 2004, the number of bloggers is 8 million times bigger than the 500,000 blogs measure by Technorati in June 2003.



That was 4 years ago and yet the numbers are steadily increasing until this very day.



I believe the reason why blogging turned into a popular online addiction is because it is an exact mirror to real life’s socializing. We gossip, we chat, we share and trade information, we spread our ideals, we make friends – all of these are the same things we do in real life; making a connection and building a relationship. Quoting Andy Warhol, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”, is very much true with the aid of a blog.

According to the IPSOS blogging research, there are 70 million people with blogging experience in Europe alone. And not surprisingly, the number of male bloggers is higher than female bloggers. In Asia, blogging is primarily used as a means to maintain and build social connections, expressing themselves at the same time. In the research conducted by Microsoft’s MSN and Windows Live Spaces in 2006, the blogosphere in Asia is surging forward with 46% of those online actively participate in blogging.

As for the blogging trends in Malaysia, the government believes that us bloggers are all insignificant. This was clearly stated in one of the interviews with a government official and was reported on theworld.org on August 1st, 2007 by Clark Boyd.


The audio report can be found here (click on the speaker icon) – Blogging in Malaysia


According to Sabahan.com, the most prevalent blogs in Malaysia are personal blogs with 28% (from the Malaysian Top 50 Bloggers). Politics only concerns 16%.
There’s a lot of benefit that can be reaped out of social blogs in Malaysian communities. Not only do we get to learn more about our own social environment, we can seek information that wouldn’t be printed out on newspapers for some very obvious reasons. And this blog is a perfect example attesting to that notion.



References
McGann, R 2004, The blogosphere by numbers, online, retrieved 2 May 2008, from http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3438891

Sifry, D 2007, The state of the live web April 2007, online, retrieved 2 May 2008, from http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html

IPSOS 2006, The power of blogs in Europe, online, retrieved 2 May 2008, from http://profesores.ie.edu/enrique_dans/download/IPSOSeuroblogs2006english.pdf

Windows Live and MSN 2006, Blogging phenomenon sweeps Asia, online, retrieved 2 May 2008, from http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/11-28-2006/0004480819&EDATE

Boyd, C 2007, Blogging in Malaysia, online, retrieved 2 May 2008, from http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/11813

Sabahan.com 2007, 50 most influential blogs in Malaysia, online, retrieved 2 May 2008, from http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/