Blogging: The Current Phenomenon & Its Benefits to the Community

Current Blogsphere
According to Technorati.com (2008) – the recognized authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, it is presently tracking 112.8 million blogs while their data states that there are more than 175,000 new blogs created every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly, counting to over 1.6 million posts each day, over 18 updates per second.

Trends in Malaysia, Asia and Europe
In Malaysia, political blogs in particular, have become very pervasive as a platform to voice out opinions. Some of the famous political blogs in Malaysia are:

1. Aisehman.org
2. Anwar Ibrahim
3. Jeff Ooi
4. Lim Kit Siang
5. RantingsbyMM
6. Rocky's Bru
7. Susan Loone
8. The Scribe A Kadir Jasin

According to Microsoft.com (2006), the majority of bloggers in Malaysia are below the age of 25 while the rest are between 25 to 34 years of age. Of these bloggers, 48% use their blogs to post entries about their personal perception of the world that is revolving around them. Surveys by Microsoft (2006) also showed that 64% of bloggers in Malaysia are women while the remaining 36% are men.

On the other hand, surveys by prnewswire.com (2006) showed that nearly half of online users in Asia have a blog as 74% of them find blogs by friends and family to be most interesting. The young people and women dominate the blogging world in Asia, except for the case of India where it is overwhelming a male domain and Korea, where blogging is part of everyday life for everyone.

Blogging in Europe however, is not as rapacious as it is n Asia. Brook (2006) reported that fairly 30% of people in Britain have ‘never heard of blogs’. Readers who actually visit blogs account only for 10%. Nevertheless, the blogging phenomenon is slowly picking up its pace as Mackenzie (2006) stated that ‘blogs are becoming an increasingly important part of the political life in Europe… with more than a quarter of readers of websites spurred to political or civic action’.

Types of Blogs
Studies done by Technorati.com (2008) showed that there are three blog types, mainly – personal, professional and corporate. It continued to show that the most common blog types in Europe are that of professionals and corporate while personal, lifestyle and religious issues are less popular among the Europeans. However, the most prevalent blog type in Asia appeared to be personal blogs.

Blogs: Benefits to the Community
With blogs categorized by topics and interest (see Classifications of Blogs), it has proven to be very benefitial to the community at large. In the Malaysian context, the emergence of political blogs which affected the recent March 8 general elections, helped Malaysian voters to be educated about their government while being able to gather information about the Opposition that the mainstream media would otherwise not report. In addition, social blogs allow family and friends to keep in touch with one another. As for professional and corporate blogs, it enables Malaysians to keep abreast with current developments.

References

Brook, S 2006, 'Blogs struggle to impress in UK', Guardian, viewed on 11 November 2008, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jun/20/pressandpublishing.newmedia>.

Mackenzie, K 2006, 'European bloggers find their voice', Financial Times, viewed on 11 November 2008, <http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=European+bloggers+find+their+voice&y=1&aje=true&x=9&id=061010001665&ct=0>.

'Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia' 2006, Prnewswire.com, viewed on 11 November 2008,
<http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/11-28-2006/0004480819&EDATE=>

'State of Blogsphere/2008', Technorati.com, viewed on 11 November 2008, < http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere>.

'Women Rule in Malaysian Blogosphere 2008', Microsoft.com, viewed on 11 November 2008, <http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/press/archive2006/linkpage4337.mspx>.