Tools take Web logs to the masses
By Leslie Walker
Washington Post
Businesses may not be creating much free content online anymore, but people are. Personal publishing has flourished throughout the dot-com downturn, thanks to tools that make it easy to rant online and attract readers through automated linking systems.
The tools have spawned a new personal publishing format called Web logs or "blogs," a hybrid of diaries and newspapers typically loaded with links to other sites. Hundreds of thousands of people update their blogs daily, posting running commentary about sex, politics and any other topic you could think of under such electronic mastheads as "Happy Deflationist" and "AndyLand X."
Free blogging tools have been available since 1999, but didn't catch on in a big way until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks triggered a torrent of global emotion. Blogs are sparking lively debate in media circles about whether they constitute journalism and whether they will siphon readers from traditional news publications.
This week, Web logs got a push out of the counterculture niche and into a more mainstream audience when Web portal Terra Lycos announced it had added blogging software to its premium publishing service (blog.tripod.lycos.com), which starts at $5 a month. Terra Lycos said it plans to release a free, slimmed-down blog-builder within a few months.
Another big nudge toward mainstream audiences is expected this year from America Online, which plans to offer Web-logging tools to its 35 million subscribers.
Blogging tools let people post text, images and links to Web pages, automatically time and date-stamp the entries, organize and archive them by month, and invite comments from readers. Web page visitors see newer entries first.
"We just passed the 1-million-registered-user threshold for our software a couple weeks ago," said Evan Williams, chief executive of the software company that created one of the earliest programs. Blogger (www.blogger.com) offers a free version and a more powerful one that costs $35 a year.
"Growth is pretty steady; we are getting around 2,000 new users a day," Williams said.
You might wonder why so many people are going to so much trouble. Some see it as part of the same cultural continuum of reality TV. Others see a broader trend in which digital technologies allow more people to participate more directly in media experiences. Under this scenario, an era of decentralized media is fast approaching, in which the idea of media consumers will become obsolete, because people will be making, rather than consuming, culture.
"There is a lot of reality TV out there, and blogs have a voyeuristic quality," said Geoff Strawbridge, director of Web publishing at Lycos. "Part of the appeal, we think, is the reality factor. Blogs let you have an instant public presence and share your own private reality show."
For a glimpse of the blogosphere, Daypop (www.daypop.com) and Blogdex (blogdex.media.mit.edu) let you search thousands of Web logs.
