Blogging about blogging

        I have enjoyed blogging for quite some time now. My first regular blog was on LiveJournal in 2005 and I had some blog posts on MySpace before that. Over the years since blogging has grown big.
        Blogging has been the driving force behind micro blog sites like Twitter and Plurk and behind Facebook’s exploding popularity. On Facebook, like on Twitter and Plurk you can compose short status posts otherwise known as micro blogging, or you can compose a longer blog post using Notes.
        For the blogger that doesn’t want to use FB but wants to say something beyond 140 characters, there is Blogger (aka Blogspot) owned by Google or WordPress.com. Both offer a basic free account with a nice web based interface.
        Then there are the bloggers like myself, I own my own domain and I utilize MacJournal (WinJournal for you folks on The Borg side) to compose my blogs from the desktop and then post to my blog which utilizes WordPress.
        The advantage of using WordPress is it offers a lot of third party plug-ins to say cross post your blog to your existing LiveJournal account. Other plug-ins allow you to announce your new blog posts to your FaceBook, Twitter, Plurk, etc. accounts. I recommend the Ping.fm plug-in as it will alert all of the above at the same time for you without you having to go to each individual site and creating a post linking to your blog.
        So why blog? Well why not? You have a lot of things to say, passions to share, opinions on things. The basic principle of starting a blog is to base it around something you have a passion for. Mine is more of a general blog but I do have a weekly tech blog I maintain. For others it may be a blog about cooking or knitting, some it may be about their favorite TV show or a book review.
        The point is we all have something we are passionate about and can offer an opinion or expertise on so go ahead and blog about it. There is no cost to it beyond an internet connection, the tools are there for you to utilize. As you get the hang of things you may want to create your own domain and use the more advanced tools, but start out on the basic sites first and hone your blogging skills there.
        So find your passion and shout it out there. In the old days you would need a publisher to pay to provide your content, in the digital age that barrier no longer exists. Blogging is global so get into the global conversation.