Blogs — Uses and Misuses

Blogs, online versions of personal diaries, have been a craze for quite sometime now. Some of us, before the Internet age, used to maintain a small diary to jot down random thoughts, reflections, sayings, poems, and other such stuff. Their online versions, however, are much more than that.

The biggest difference between a blog and a personal diary is that while the latter was a very private affair, accessible not even to family members, a blog is a public account. In fact the whole world, yes the whole world connected to the internet gets to read its contents if they come across it.

This is what gives blogs a whole dimension, making it a platform that can be used for multiple purposes. Here is a small list of their many uses:

• A personal diary
• Official company blog: recreational use
• Sales and marketing: company products, latest news etc.
• Online communities: a network built around a blog
• Publishing medium: freedom of expression for social and political views
• Spamming: creating fake blogs to get top ranks with search engines

It is surprising why anyone would like to display their private life and thoughts in full public view for the whole world to see. This appears to have been the whole motive behind the first blogs, to put on display ones daily life right down to the minutest details for the whole world to see: eccentricity coupled with exhibitionism.

What bloggers should keep in mind while blogging is that by displaying our thoughts, emotions, opinions and personal life in full public glory, we are revealing a part of our private life. We are giving outsiders, strangers, friends, collegues, and relatives a full view of what's happening inside us and with our lives, something we would hesitate to do in real life. Once blogging begins, it's difficult to control, and we end up sharing our personal thoughts and emotions that we would otherwise have kept to ourselves. The blog entices us, and we fall to the bait.

Blogs don't preserve our anonymity. They let us publish our pictures, professional and personal details, physical addresses and locations, etc. The biggest precaution to be observed therefore is to think twice before publishing anything, and ask oneself if one would like to make such matters public. The blog readers try to judge us, understand us, get information about us, and take pleasure while peeking into our private lives without our realising it.

With popularity has come the downside of blogs. Comment spamming to gain top rankings with search engines, creation of fake blogs to provide backlinks, using blogs to sell products, all of these have brought their fair share of discredit.

Blogs are here to stay. What perhaps began as a unique way to be different on the internet caught up with the rest of the world like wildfire. Yet, in the final reckoning, they are just one more website, readymade though, that you share with thousands of others on the same server.