Première

Blogging first started out as a social sharing tool enabling users to contribute their own thoughts and opinions through the Internet community. However this phenomenon, like much of other social networking sites, has taken flight since its establishment. The easy accessibility of free blogging site such as WordPress or LiveJournal now allow more users to join and share even the slightest fraction of their lives. Its evolution has impacted the world of journalism as well – further redefining the word credibility in this Information-Era. Journalism, by definition, is writing that reflects superficial thought and research or the occupation of reporting news. The approach and subjective factors are not explicitly instructed, so blogs have gradually turned into fresh mediums of new updates – whether it be world conflict, fashion, music, urban culture, fine dining, etc. The extent of the genre-spectrum is endless but it is also this sort of convenience that is starting to raise the brows of critical readers. Skeptical about the data, curious about the back story, and who exactly is the author/journalist? The private lives of users are exposed to anyone with Web access (locked posts/photos being hacked), or cookies could be extracted by a bug from an unknown downloaded program. But I believe if all bloggers exercise the same caution as reading other people’s posts then risks could be reduced significantly. There are even people who pocket monetary “funding” to write good reviews, (no matter the market’s competitiveness, a person who claims him/herself a critic or journalist should not cower in front of the green temptation. By the same token though, there are those who have indeed made a career out of maintaining a well-received and popular blog (P!NK or PersonalOpinions). I chose Blogger mainly because I am a blogger myself (powered by Blogger of course), and this dimension essentially provides the free stage for all writers. No agendas. Personal perspectives.