Sep
17
I stumbled upon this post by Alex Cristache at Blogsessive today called “Top 5 Reasons Why Blogging Rocked Our World”. His top five reasons are:
- Blogging gave us back “reading”
- Blogging gave us back “writing”
- Blogging gave us back “thinking”
- Blogging gave us back “evolution”
- Blogging gave us back “empathy”
It’s a good post and I suggest reading it, but I think one big thing was left out. Blogging has given us a way to connect with like-minded (and not so like-minded) people in a way that was not really available before (at least not in such a convenient and engaging format).
Consider what it was like before blogs. Communicating with people online was limited to what, email, IMs, forums, chatrooms, and newsgroups? As posted on Wikipedia, “Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with ‘threads.’”
Those were all fine, but blogs opened up a door for any average person to write about whatever they wanted to and most importantly have it read by others (feeds have played an important role in this as well). Subjects can be as broad as possible or as niche as the blogger dictates. And not only does that person get to have their thoughts read by others, they get to communicate with those people, and often as a result, relationships are born. Could this stuff have been done with other tools before? Sure, but not in such an appealing way.
So I don’t know if blogging gave us back communication and networking, but it made it better. Of course social networks have helped too.
Hey Chris, thanks for sharing Blogsessive’s article with your readers and also for this wonderful follow-up.
As I said in the post, those were my personal top 5, not exclusive 5, or only 5. But see, “blogging gave us back ‘thinking’”. Thinking that led another fellow blogger (you) to another wonderful post, and thus, brought me here, connecting with you.
So, what I meant to say is that I find those 5 reasons as being “parents” for many many more reasons that basically every person can relate to, varying from person to person.
Kind regards,
Alex
Thanks for dropping by Alex. Your article was good and very thought-provoking.
Also, blog software such as wordpress has given us the ability to develop and organize content in a far better and easier way than what was previously available - creating a page through FTP or an expensive CMS tool.
that is a great point! I have found a lot of people with similar interests as me just trough blogging. That I never would have met without.
“Blogging has given us a way to connect with like-minded” Very true… from blogging only i met people of my field..
I agree with all the five plus one of your points. In my case, it also helps me retain my sanity!
[...] Blogsessive - I linked to a post from this blog yesterday, and admittedly I was not previously familiar with this blog, but having looked through it now, [...]
It sure did give us back all that and more. Personally I think the readers of the world united to make blogging a success.