The Era of Blogosphere

Blogging is the current phenomenon that surrounds our daily life. With such popularity of blogging among the society, the era of blogosphere was created. Blogosphere can be simply defined as the world of weblogs, in which bloggers from all around the world communicate with each other as a community (Encarta.msn.com 2009).

According to Technorati, who is the leading expert in the studies of blogosphere, the size of the current blogosphere is 133 million blog records as indexed by them since 2002 (Technorati 2008) (refer to image below).

                                                                            (Image source : Technorati 2008)

Based on their State of the Blogosphere 2010 report, the key trend of blogosphere for 2010 is the significant growth of mobile blogging, as well as the influence of women and mom bloggers in the area of blogosphere, mainstream media and brands (Technorati 2010).

In local context, political blogs has been the most prevalent trend in the country (Ulicny 2008). Such trend exist is mainly because of the encouragement towards the use of Web technologies and the growth of Internet-based enterprise given by the Malaysian Government (Ulicny 2008). Hence, blogs has become an essential platform for the public to voice out their opinions, especially on political matters. 

Such prevalent blogs also brings further benefits to the community. As we are aware of, the local mainstream newspapers, such as The Star and Utusan Malaysia are owned by the Government. Hence, censorship will be imposed before any news is being published. With the existence of such political blogs, the public will be able to get further information regarding political matters, and not only relying solely on the mainstream media as their main source of information. 

References

Encartamsn.com 2009, Blogosphere, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701704686/blogosphere.html>.

Technorati 2008, State of the Blogosphere: Introduction, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-introduction/>. 

Technorati 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>.

Ulicny, B 2008, Modeling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining the Malaysian Blogosphere, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://vistology.com/papers/VIS-SBP08%20.pdf>.