What is the Purpose of a Blog?
What do people write about in their blogs? Why do they spend their time writing things few people if any will ever see? Do they just like to read their own words? Do some people just like to talk for the purpose of listening to themselves?
I have three or four or five blogs. I can’t even keep track of all the places I’ve posted writing on the Internet. For a while I wrote articles for Helium.com, but those were for money and the money just wasn’t there. I like to try and write useful information, or at least be entertaining. I like to practice my writing every day so I don’t lose any ability to write I may have learned in all my years at school. I guess the main reason I write blogs is because I like the idea of publishing something in a place where some person might see it and be entertained or learn something.
A lot of people keep blogs to keep track of their personal lives. I have a personal blog. I write things I think about and what I feel and what is happening around me there. I don’t write about everything. I don’t put a lot of detailed personal information online. My private thoughts are my own business. I know some people publish their private lives as if it was something important to random people who might read their journal. I don’t see the point in this. Do people think they are going to become famous because they post some incident from their life online? I know some people think they are going to make money from a blog. I don’t even see how this would be possible except in rare freak cases where people spend all their time and commercialize their blog into something resembling a newspaper. I know a lot of high profile blogs hire people to write articles for them to publish. There is a whole minor industry in content creation. You can buy random articles and publishing rights and post canned stories to your site. I don’t see the point in this. If you have something to say, say it yourself. I have seen articles that are obviously copied and pasted from other sources posted to blogs. So you can be a plagiarist? I would rather read something original.
What are your objectives when you post a blog entry? Do you post for yourself or for an audience. I think it was Johnathen Swift who said “None but a blockhead writes for anything but money.” Swift would have had advertisements on his blog if he lived today. What is the purpose of a blog? Is it just a lot of words? Leave comments if you want to add your own ideas to this post.
