Everyone Has An Opinion

Blogs first came on my radar with all the hoo-haa in the media when Arianna Huffington launched The Huffington Post in 2005. I was fascinated by this apparent group blog and the notion that several people could contribute their thoughts to a constantly updating log that wasn't a website. It was a public airing of individual opinion and I thought that sounded fab!

Around the same time I received an email from my ISP telling me I'd been allocated FREE blog space and since I was already engaged in wonderful, lively, opinionated political and social conversations via email with a friend, I suggested he and I use the offer of the blog space and make our own blog.

We never did because really we had no idea how to create a blog or the time to figure it out - we just totally and excitedly loved the concept of having a dedicated space online in which to sprout our thoughts,opinions and theories about our world and our times.

The motivation would seem to have been then that we would have a forum for our views beyond our one-to-one email exchanges but did we consider if anyone else would be at all interested in what we had to say? Probably not. But I think we thought if Arianna Huffington and her celebrity pals could have their say why couldn't we.... pseudo journalism for the ordinary folk?

The Huffington Post stands out for me as a great example of the rise of the blog. In his article in The Washington Post, July 9 2007, "The Blog That Made It Big", Howard Kurtz makes the following observation:

" ...skeptics dismissed it as a vanity outlet for her [Huffington] and her Hollywood friends. But The Huffington Post has become an undeniable success, its evolution offering a roadmap of what works on the Web."

Read the whole article here.