In the Blogosphere....

A blogosphere is basically made up of all blogs and their interconnections. These interconnections include online services such as Twitter and YouTube. By 2007, Technorati has tracked over 70 million weblogs with about 120,000 new weblogs being created around the world every day (Sifry 2007).

The graph below shows the number of blog as tracked by Technorati from March of 2003 to March of 2007.

Image source: www.sifry.com

So what are all these people blogging about?

Apparently, based on a survey by Technorati (Sussman 2009), the top five topics that bloggers blog about are :
- Technology 
- Politics 
- Business 
- News 
- Personal Musings. 


And based on the survey, only a small percentage of them were from the Asia Pacific (APAC), which is 10%.

Image source: Technorati

In 2007, Gaman compiled a list of the Top 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia. Of those top 50, 


- 28% of them wrote about personal stuff 
- 16% wrote about politics and technology respectively 


 This is just a rough estimate of what goes on in the blogs of Malaysian but it is an insight nonetheless.

Blogs are gaining more and more ground as a serious source of information. A prime example was during the Iranian elections. Iran banned journalists from moving around the country and blocked Facebook, Twitter, and many other popular websites (Hughes & Kellman 2009). As a result, many turned to blogs as a source of news on the topic.

In Malaysia, blogs have a significant ability to dodge censorship. The government control that is imposed on most journalists and newspaper has caused most to doubt the reliability of the mainstream media in Malaysia (Travis 2008). Therefore, most look to online and foreign news sources, including blogs, to get the full story and even stories that weren’t even reported. Blogs give an opportunity for local journalist to write stories that they normally might not be able to for a newspaper. Also, readers are able to get much wanted local perspectives and discuss on issues that are occurring around Malaysia. 

Blogs have crossed that line from being an insignificant online trend to being a powerful source of information. For that reason, the blogosphere will continue to grow in number and importance, providing a larger ground for bloggers all around the world.

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References

Sifry, D 2007, ‘The State of the Live Web, April 2007’, www.sifry.com, 5 April, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html>

 Sussman, M 2009, Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging - SOTB 2009, Technorati, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-2-the-what-and-why2/>.

Gaman 2007, ‘50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia’, Sabahan.com, 6 February, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>

Hughes,  D & Kellman, R 2009, Blogging’s Global Impact and the Future of Blogging, Technorati, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/page-2/>.

Travis, H 2008, Censorship drives Malaysians to blogs, Western News, viewed 3 September 2010, <http://communications.uwo.ca/com/western_news/stories/censorship_drives_malaysians_to_blogs_20080905442680/>.