Online babbling increasing due to Weblogs

Aside from Friendster, the Weblog was the big Internet trend of 2003. A Weblog ("blog," for short) is a page of short chronological entries, usually consisting of links, personal commentary or diary-type ramblings.

If you've ever participated at a discussion site such as Slashdot.org, browsed the links on Fark.com, or bared your soul in your LiveJournal, then you've already used a blog.

Blogs have been around since at least 1999, but they've exploded in popularity in the last year or so. The earliest blogs simply consisted of links to interesting and unusual news stories across the Internet, interspersed with personal commentary and reader comments.

Many blogs still retain this format, although the increasing popularity of blogging has given rise to such variations as online diaries, political, entertainment, tech, photography, humor and group blogs.

Celebrity bloggers include the likes of Wil Wheaton, Moby, Adam Curry, Ru Paul, Michael Moore and Bill Maher. Every presidential campaign this year has a blog and mainstream news corporations are even getting into the act. Blogging has created a vibrant online community that emphasizes an independent exchange of news, commentary and ideas.

So how can you get in on it? Considering that you have actually something interesting to say, the first step is to figure out which blogging tool is best for your needs and your level of technical skill. What follows is a review of the most popular free blogging tools.

Blogger.com, which is now owned by Google, jumpstarted the blogging craze in 1999 with their user-friendly service that allows you to easily publish a Web log without any technical skills. You can have your blog hosted for free on Blogspot.com, or you can have Blogger publish it to your own Web site. Blogger is by far the most popular tool for blogs with over one million registered users.

But if you want more power and control, and you've got technical skills, then you may want to check out Movable Type. Movable Type is a powerful, free blogging tool that has become the standard among independent bloggers. Movable Type is installed on your own account. Any host that allows you to run computer-generated imagery and a database will do.

Installing and configuring Movable Type requires some basic knowledge of file hosting protocols and file permissions. You can customize the design of your blog, but it requires a firm grasp of hypertext markup language and style sheets. For tech-savvy users, Movable Type offers the best features and the greatest degree of control over a blog.

Another option are the community-centered blog services such as Livejournal (or its darker cousin Deadjournal), Diaryland and Xanga. These sites are geared more towards younger audiences with an emphasis on personal diaries. The upside to these services is that they're free and easy to use. The downside is the lack of features, which often require you to pay extra.

Once you've got your blog online, how do you get people to read it? If your content is interesting enough, people will eventually come. This is true more with the community sites such as Livejournal, but if you're hosting your own blog, you'll need to do some promotion. If you're using Blogger or Movable Type, you can configure your software to "ping" various blog lists everytime you update. Submit your blog to the various blog-specific directories list on Google and other search engines.

If your blog has a simple syndication feed, submit the Internet address of your feed to blog search engines such as Feedster.com. Simple syndication feeds also have the added benefit that readers can read your blog regularly using a tool called a news aggregator. Feedster and Bloglines.com are two services that allow you to subscribe to simple syndication feeds.

But the best way to get readers to your blog is to participate. Read other people's blogs, post comments, and link to them.

Blogrolling.com offers a free tool that allows you to easily manage a list of links on your blog. Many bloggers will check to see who has posted comments or linked to them, and will be more than happy to read your Web log in return.

In the words of my mass media professor, remember that you have more personal publishing power right now than at anytime in history. Just make sure you use it wisely.