Why blog?

I was going to call Dave on this one, and initially drafted a comment for his blog. I've decided to post at home instead and develop my thoughts a little further. For context, Dave has decided to take a break from writing his six-month-old personal blog, saying "Its [sic] hard building community when it is not reciprocated." I want to say: a few months of blogging is hardly doing the hard yards to “build community”. (But then, I don't have young kids, so theoretically my time is a little cheaper!) I wonder what Dave was expecting to have happened in this period, and what is his criteria for thinking it has failed?

Around the time I started blogging, it became really popular. I just sneak into 2002 which probably makes me just before the big boom, but the hard core bloggers started way back in 1997 or before, when it wasn't even called blogging... [Update:Hmm... maybe that blog explosion was a little earlier than I thought... Perhaps I was as much mid-explosion or even late-explosion when I started bloggin. Who knows.] Moving beyond Dave's particular situation, my suspicion is that in the last 18 months a whole lot of people have started blogging 'cause it's the new thing, without having a particular reason for doing it. Nothing wrong with that; it's just I always think if you aim for nowhere you'll probably get there.

Anyone can have a voice—but does everyone have a message? Numbers are not the big thing. For me, blogging is half a chance to express my thoughts, half a chance to send news home. Dialogue is important, but it's the writing that matters for me, at least as much as the reading. And in the end, that's why right now I feel like I'll probably keep doing this.

In the last year two friends have asked me about how to start blogging, though neither of them has done so yet. I hope they do—they're both interesting and intelligent people and I'd love to read what they have to say. You know who you are. Is it time to get started? You have friends in geeky places...