Item 2-5(a): The blogging phenomena & benfits to the community

It is fair to say that the blogging sphere has now expanded into micro-blogging with the current hyde over micro-blogging site, Twitter. From Technorati (2008), there were about 112.8 million blogs last year, with the growth of more than 180,000 blogs created per day and if micro-blogging site, Twitter is counted, the figure should be hugely enlarged by now. Technorati (2009) states that majority of the people surveyed use Twitter to promote their blogs.


Technorati also made a statistic of the contrast of the age group of majority bloggers in Europe compared to Asia. It is said that in Asia people below 35s are the majority whereas in Europe, people above 35s are the main consumers. According to Simons (2008), there is an increading need to list out the type of blogs out there as just the term 'blog' is too general in form. The diary type blog, as categorized in Simon's taxonomy, is the majority type of blogging that can be seen worldwide. However, Malaysia is starting to see a surge of political blogs as well. Even though political blogging in Malaysia is still young, it is seen as more detailed in comparison to hard copy news.

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References:

Simons, M. 2008, 'Towards a taxonomy of blogs', Australian Policy Online, viewed 18 November 2009, http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0

Technorati, 2008, State of the Blogosphere, viewed 18 November 2009, http://technorati.com/state-of-the-blogosphere/

Technorati, 2009, Day 5:Twitter, Global impact and future blogging, viewed 18 November 2009, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/