4. Blogs as Diaries

Diaries used to be kept under lock and key, but today—thanks to blogging—millions of personal journals are on public exhibition. Certainly a subset of bloggers choose to hide their chronicles from the eyes of all but a chosen few, but for the most part, online diarists happily upload the minutiae of their lives, inviting the world to not only observe, but to comment and link to their revelatory posts.

Sure, some of these diaries are dreck, full of self-indulgent whinging and roostering, but who’s to say that the latest egotistical romp hasn’t provided psychic ballast for its maker or given solace to some reader? The sheer number of blog readers essentially guarantees that while you may not get the fifteen minutes of uber-fame ...

Get Dispatches from Blogistan: A Travel Guide for the Modern Blogger now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.