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November 16, 2003

Keeping an online diary

Blogs give running commentary about life

   Now, although he’s preparing for an entirely different profession, the Cadillac man sees his byline every day. He gets to write about what he loves. And while he doesn’t make a dime for his efforts, he has several loyal readers.

   Holmquist is one of millions of people worldwide who are devoted to blogging, a rapidly growing area of Web publishing.

   Authored by everyday Internet users, blogs are online journals usually devoted to a specific topic of interest to their readers and regularly updated, usually in reverse chronological order, said Michael Stephens, an avid blogger and part-time Traverse City resident. Their content varies from links and commentary about other Web sites, to company news, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.

   “It could be so broad it’s just somebody’s life, it could be as specific as a teacher’s first year,” Stephens said.

   Before the turn of the century — 2000, that is — there were just a handful of blogs (short for Web logs), says Rebecca Blood, a San Francisco consultant, blogger and author of “The Web Log Handbook.” Then a group of San Francisco- based Web programmers released Blogger, a build-your-own blog provider that allows users to update their sites from anywhere in the world through an easy-to-use Web interface.

   Now there are tens of thousands of blogs, with hundreds more going online each day — all allowing their authors to share their thoughts, feelings and opinions with the rest of the World Wide Web whenever the urge strikes.

   Holmquist heard about blogging two years ago while participating in e-mail discussion groups, and now runs his own blog called Micah Holmquist’s Irregular Thoughts and Links. On it, he offers his thoughts on everything from music and movies to U.S. foreign policy.

   For the 26-year-old Northwestern Michigan College computer networking student, blogging was originally a catharsis — an outlet for self-expression at a time when he was severely depressed. Soon, however, writing about his life became less important to him and he moved on to public commentary.

   Now, he said, blogging is a means of another kind of expression, “particularly with my frustration with the ‘war on terror’ and the dishonesty of Mr. Bush’s administration.”

   Holmquist spends about an hour a day blogging, often in the early morning. Unlike his earlier, random-musing style, his new blog style features commentary “of some significance,” ensuring that the posts hold up over time.

   “I think it’s very easy to make a lot of comments that three weeks from now are going to have no relevance,” he said. “I work hard to post something of some record and that someone years from now can look at to get an idea of the times.”

   Blood believes that Weblogs build better writers and critical thinkers and encourage self-awareness, a theory with which Holmquist agrees. But while the act of writing is something he does for himself, he nevertheless wishes that he had a bigger audience than the one or two dozen readers who regularly scan the site.

   “I’m not obsessed with it like some people are, but I’d like 100,000 people to read it each day, or 1,000,” he acknowledged.

   For many, blogging is not so much about self-expression as it is a way of sharing information and keeping in touch with family and friends. In fact, some blogs began as attempts to update friends without having to send 10 or 15 e-mails.

   “They’re kind of the holiday newsletter taken to the everyday,” said Stephens, head of networked resources, development and training at the St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, Ind.

   An ardent believer in the Internet as a community, and in blogging as a way to share yourself in that community, Stephens has not one but six blogs. Among the most personal are Dreaming On Blog and Up North Blog, which chronicles life at the family cottage on Spider Lake in text, photographs and links.

   “Great day on the peninsula,” begins a typical entry dated Aug. 30. “Julie, John, Steve and I spent a wonderful day driving around the Leelanau Peninsula. We spent time at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse, Leland and had lunch at Kejara’s Bridge in Lake Leelanau. (Excellent food ... excellent service ... don’t miss it.)

   “Here’s the photographer at work,” it continues. “Julie, Steve and I took turns shooting pictures and video with my Sony cameras. What didn’t get caught on film was my graceful slide off of a rock and into the shallow, scraping my arm ... A very nice ranger at the Lighthouse did some first aid ... and we rolled on.”

   While the minutia of his life may not appeal to everybody, Stephens, 38, says he occasionally gets feedback from complete strangers who hear about the blog or stumble across it while looking for something else. One of those was Eric Hines, station manager at WNMC, Northwestern Michigan College’s listener-supported radio, who found the site while searching on Google for TC Wi-Fi, wireless high fidelity access for computers.

   “I ended up on his blog, tooled around a little bit and responded to a couple of things on it,” said Hines. “I’ve run into blogs the same way before. The thing about blogs is that they’re well represented in Google because blogs are updated so often. Just type in ‘TC’ and Stephens’ blog is one of the first things that come up.”

   For those who don’t want to leave searching for blogs to chance, Web sites like www.lights.com offer Weblog compendiums, listings of directories for blogs on every topic — and no particular topic at all. There’s Blog Universe, a blog directory categorized by genre; Euroblogs, a list of European Weblogs categorized by the home country of its maintainers; and even blogs4God, a semi-definitive list of Christian webloggers.

   As software developers make it easier for people to join the publishing revolution — as of Jan. 6 Blogger had over 1 million registered users — the number of blogs shows no signs of abating. In her book, Blood estimates that we may soon be able to choose among 500,000 Weblogs. And at a June meeting of the Library and Information Technology Association, technology experts named blogging as one of the top 10 technology issues and trends, said Stephens.

   “Probably for the next two, three years this will be the next big thing. And then it will be replaced by something else,” he said, noting his friend’s observation that computer years are a lot like dog years.

   Holmquist isn’t so sure.

   “When you look at some forms of telling stories, they’ve lasted longer than they were supposed to,” he said. “Books didn’t go away when (e-books) came along. TV didn’t kill movies. And people are still reading magazines.”