Blogging has been a main feature on the Internet for more than ten years now, and the past few years have seen its popularity affect even the way the Internet generates its content and how it contributes to traditional media. Many popular websites now are actually blogs with additional features that elevate their status from simple text entries to websites for everyone to see.
The easiest way for bloggers to easily show their creations to everybody is by joining social networking sites. Giants such as MySpace, Facebook, and Multiply have already integrated blogging as one of the features that hook their users. MySpace will simply be the choice for most users as it has the largest network, so it only takes a matter of finding your friends and blogging your way. A nice feature with social networking sites including Facebook is that all your friends will be alerted if you have a new entry, and most-read blogs will be featured in a certain corner of everybody's profile.
It is also much easier to start a blog in social networking sites since all you have to do is think of a blog title and a theme that match your own profile while the rest is handled by the site itself. Users can then classify each blog entry and archive previous posts. Multiply even uses the same user-picked theme and applies it across all features.
What these sites lack are a result of them being attached to a community. Bloggers will only be able to show off their entries to their friends, and linking to other blogs will be nearly impossible. Specialized blog hosting sites such as Blogspot, Livejournal, and Wordpress present users with an easy interface to create and manage their blogs, even allowing users to create more than one blog at a time. Bloggers then simply link other blog sites that they also like to read, plus add comments to certain posts while also promoting their own blogs. Some sites even inject their social features such as the ability to add friends. These sites also have the ability to generate income due to Adsense.
One can also submit their recent posts to social bookmarking sites, and they will be immediately posted on the home pages of users you are connected to once they receive them. The downside is that the chances of your post appearing long enough to be read may depend on the number of submissions on that day. It would be best to create a very good introduction or title since these will most likely catch the attention of visitors.
Another interesting way of integrating social networking within your blog is through interacting with web-based widgets such as those featured by MyBlogLog. Members can use statistical tools offered by MyBlogLog while also being part of a bigger community. Users can then view sites within their community and also get featured as well if the content is considered “hot” by the community you have joined in.
If you need more control in integrating social networking features in your blog or you simply want to create a community around your blog’s main theme, you might want to consider using tools found in Ning or KickApps. The former, however, would eventually force you to create a social network first while the latter may scare a lot of common users with the extensive use of code. Their strong tools, though, can lead to a better group that is focused on the theme or topic that you have created.
In the end, blogging for the sake of blogging itself is still available, which is how it was used in the first place: an online diary of sorts. But blogging has evolved into a more interpersonal way expressing oneself to the world, especially with the integration of social networking features. http://blog.myspace.com/sublimeaction