With the recent rise in advanced social networking websites like MySpace, FaceBook, and Xanga, where the young and would-be cool like to spend their time, much in the way they congregate at their local malls, the personal blog as a means of communicating has taken on new significance.

But the blog is nothing new, and is certainly not the creation of the social networking site. Blogging, in fact, has been going on for well over a decade, and was originally called journaling.

The term “weblog’ was actually coined in 1994, and was transformed to blog in 1999 by Peter Merholz, when the early blogging hosts appeared. http://Blogger.com, which now belongs to Google, showed up at about that time. In the early days of blogging, most bloggers limited themselves to recording the details of their daily lives.

But blogging has now become an important tool for politicians, entrepreneurs, charities, and almost anyone who needs an inexpensive way to reach a big audience.

Blogging is ideal for those who have a lot to say and not much time in which to say it. Free blogging platforms like Blogger and Wordpress enable the busy blogger to post even while he or she holding a conversation or watching television.

Blogs let anyone communicate over the Internet without knowing a thing about .html or any other sort of code. If you can type with your PC’s keyboard, you can blog.

Blogging is a way to establish an instant and ongoing dialog with others who share your interest in a topic and comment on your posts. Read the blog devoted to political candidates during a campaign, and see how quickly they grow. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the traffic which a popular blog can generate in a single day.

While blogs on politics or religion, or those whose authors try to serve as investigative reporters are often called controversial, the vast majority of blogging is devoted to socializing.

And that is why Myspace and other social networking sites have taken the Internet world by storm. In a world where their busy lives don’t afford people the time and energy to get out and about as much as they’d like, social blogging is a pleasant, if not perfect, substitute.

Blogging is simply the 21st century version of the written correspondence which, a hundred years ago, took months to reach its audience and months more to provide an answer, and friendships which took months to build can now happen in hours!